UC-NRLF 


13 


GIFT  OF 


1  •*  T»  53  -     T) WP  ~T~  n  P     Vm  i  n  cr 


'Books  that  you  may  carry 
to  the  fire,  and  hold  readily 
in  your  hand,  are  the  most 
useful  after  all" 

—JOHNSON 


STORIES   OF 
THE   RAILWAY 


STORIES    FROM    SCRIBNER 

* 
STORIES   OF 

THE   RAILWAY 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S    SONS 
1893 


1  '         '          '    >  >  •»     1        '  )        >        )     ,        , 

*  >'  }1>>       'j1*1''*'1 

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xf. 


Copyright,  1893,  by 
Charles  Scribner's  Sons 

GIFT*/ 

/O^'m-e  Vocxv\o 


Trow 


STORIES  OF  THE   RAILWAY 


As  THE  SPARKS  FLY  UPWARD 

BY   GEORGE   A.    HIBBARD 

How  I  SENT  MY  AUNT  TO  BALTIMORE 
BY  C.  S.  DAVISON 

RUN  TO  SEED 
BY  THOMAS  NELSON  PAGE 

FLANDROE'S  MOGUL 
BY  A.  C.  GORDON 


M144831 


"  AS  THE  SPARKS  FLY   UP 
WARD" 

BY  GEORGE  A.  HIBBARD 


IT  was  a  minute  past  the  time  when  the 
"  through  "  night  express  should  start, 
but  still  the  ponderous  engine  stood 
motionless,  the  steam  escaping  with  a 
terrific  roar,  and  mounting  high  in  the 
air,  first  in  a  vigorous  jet,  and  then 
spreading  in  dull,  whitened  clouds  that 
soon  mingled  with  and  were  lost  in  the 
denser  mass  and  greater  volume  of  the 
rolling  smoke.  The  hands  of  the  illu- 


^      tI2t  v        STORIES   OF   THB  .RAILWAY 

'minated  clock,  placed  on  the  depot  wall, 
had  passed  the  points  on  the  dial  that  in 
dicated  the  hour  of  departure,  and  now 
stood  at  not  more  than  a  minute  after  ; 
but  even  so  small  a  particle  of  time  was 
of  importance,  for  this,  the  night  express, 
was  the  particular  feature  of  this  partic 
ular  road,  and  to  get  it  to  its  destination 
at  the  advertised  instant  was  the  duty 
and  pride  of  every  employe  ;  for  this, 
every  resource  of  the  great  corporation 
was  employed,  every  sacrifice  of  other 
considerations  made.  Over  those  miles 
and  miles  of  shining  rails,  on  which  the 
train  must  run  all  night,  lay  the  road 
from  West  to  East  and  from  East  to 
West,  and  upon  the  speed  and  certainty 
with  which  they  were  covered  depended 
many  an  important  affair— the  success 
or  failure  of  a  venture,  sometimes  the 
life  or  death  of  a  Cause. 

The   station-master  hurried  up   to  the 
engine  and  looked  in  the  window. 


"AS   THE  SPARKS   FLY   UPWARD"      13 

"What's  the  matter,  Irby  ? "  he  said 
to  the  engineer. 

"Spurlock's  not  here,"  answered  the 
man,  who  sat  on  the  narrow,  transverse 
seat  in  the  cab,  with  his  hand  on  the 
heavy,  shining,  round-tipped  handle  of 
the  reverse-lever. 

"  Where  is  he  ?  " 

"Don't  know,"  replied  Irby.  "He 
stepped  off  five  minutes  ago,  saying  he'd 
be  back  directly." 

"If  he  isn't  here  in  thirty  seconds 
I'll  have  to  give  you  another  fireman." 

Everything  indicated  readiness  for  de 
parture.  The  loungers  along  the  broad, 
cemented  walk  of  the  station  — those 
who  had  sought  a  little  exercise  before 
the  long,  cramped  ride— had  mounted 
to  the  cars;  and  the  porters,  after  pick 
ing  up  the  little  stools  placed  before  the 
steps  of  the  "sleepers."  stood  ready  all 
along  the  line  to  swing  themselves  on  to 
the  platforms  as  soon  as  the  series  of 


14  STORIES    OF    THE   RAILWAY 

jarring  jerks  with  which  a  train  straight 
ens  itself  out  for  work,  indicated  that 
the  "7.30"  was  off. 

The  scene  as  it  now  presented  itself 
— a  minute  and  more  after  the  time 
when  "  No.  47"  should  have  been  under 
way — was  characteristically  American, 
for  nowhere  else  in  the  world  is  quite 
its  like  to  be  found.  The  huge  arched 
station  (so  large  that,  numerous  as  were 
the  hard,  clear,  powerful  electric  lights, 
there  still  were  left  many  areas  of  gloom) 
echoed  and  re-echoed  with  multitudi 
nous  sounds,  and,  closing  your  eyes,  you 
might  almost  have  imagined  yourself  in 
an  asylum  for  demented  noises,  the  air 
was  so  burdened  with  the  sustained  up 
roar,  distressed  by  such  brazen  clangor, 
torn  by  so  many  a  wild  shriek.  The 
gleaming  steel  rails  banded  the  broad, 
boarded  space,  stretching  in  innumera 
ble  lines  far  across  to  the  opposite  wall  ; 
now  running  with  the  parallel  exact- 


"  AS   THE   SPARKS   FLY   UPWARD  "      15 


ness  of  a  copy-book ;  now  crossing  and 
recrossing  each  other  in  what  seemed 
inextricable  confusion.  Long  strings  of 
cars,  their  windows  all  aglow,  stood 
here  or  there — just  arrived,  or  just  on 
the  point  of  leaving — this  train  "in,"  af 
ter  having  run  all  day  along  the  shores 
of  the  great  lakes  ;  that  ready  to  plunge 
into  the  dark  Pennsylvania  forests,  and 
hurry  away,  perhaps,  past  some  flaming 
oil-well  into  the  more  distant  coal-fields. 
People  swarmed  everywhere  —  passen 
gers  and  employes,  baggage-men,  brake- 
men,  and  express-men.  Heavy  trucks, 
overloaded  with  luggage,  were  wildly 
trundled  through  the  place  ;  small  iron 
carriages,  piled  high  with  mail  -  bags, 
were  recklessly  rolled  past ;  and  in  and 
out  darted  the  bearers  of  flaming  torches 
that  cast  a  wild  glare  about  them  as  they 
moved,  who,  with  long-handled  hammers 
tested  the  car-wheels  with  ringing  blows. 
And  away  in  the  distance,  where  the  im- 


l6  STORIES   OF   THE   RAILWAY 

mense,  arched  opening  of  the  station 
permitted  a  glimpse  of  the  darkness 
beyond,  gleamed  innumerable  lights — 
green,  red  and  orange— some  stationary 
and  arranged  in  complex  designs,  others 
swinging  in  eccentric  circles,  or  flitting 
like  the  ignes  fatui  of  swamp-lands, 
along  the  ground,  now  appearing  and 
now  disappearing. 

"Here  he  comes!"  shouted  a  voice 
somewhere  in  remote  darkness. 

"Hurry  up,"  commanded  the  station- 
master  ;  and,  with  a  running  accom 
paniment  of  questions,  exhortations, 
and  admonitions,  lit  up  by  some  scat 
tered  execrations,  a  slight  man,  dressed 
in  the  blackened  and  greasy  overalls 
and  "jumper"  of  a  laborer,  ran  along 
the  walk  and  mounted  the  engine. 

"  Let  her  go,  Dan,"  he  said. 

The  engineer  glanced  at  the  conductor 
leaning  against  the  wall ;  saw  him  quickly 
shut  his  watch  and  wave  his  hand.  One 


"AS  THE  SPARKS   FLY   UPWARD"      17 

pull  on  a  lever,  already  under  his  hand, 
and  the  piston-rods  began  to  glide  out 
and  in,  the  huge  driving-wheels  to  re 
volve,  and  the  train,  with  almost  a  dis 
locating  shock,  so  hurried  had  been  the 
start,  was  finally  off. 

"  What  was  it,  Jeff?  "  said  Irby. 

"Why,"  answered  Spurlock,  with  a 
hardly  perceptible  hesitation,  "  a  little 
celebration  of  my  own.  Do  you  forget 
what  night  it  is  ?  " 

"  No,"  answered  the  other  and  older 
man,  a  trifle  sharply.  "  But  what  did 
you  promise  me  ?  " 

"  It's  only  once  a  year,"  responded 
Spurlock,  sullenly,  "and  I  haven't 
touched  a  thing  for  ten  weeks." 

Irby  did  not  answer,  but  peered  out 
into  the  darkness  through  the  narrow 
cab  window. 

The  depot  had  been  left  behind,  and 
the  engine  was  now  passing  through 
the  outer  business  belt  of  the  great  city. 


A 

l8  STORIES   OF   THE   RAILWAY 

Huge,  silent  warehouses,  with  their  shut 
ters  closed,  quite  as  if  they  had  gone  to 
sleep  with  iron  lids  shut  over  their  in 
numerable  eyes,  were  to  be  seen  along 
the  deserted  streets ;  high  chimneys 
here  and  there  rose  above  the  roofs — 
they  might  have  been  columns  support 
ing  the  leaden  sky — the  dull  clouds  of 
smoke  that  lazily  seemed  to  overflow 
them  only  distinguishable  from  the 
dark  heavens  by  their  greater  density. 
It  had  been  snowing  during  the  early 
evening,  but  the  flakes  had  melted  as 
they  fell,  and  the  ill-paved  roads  were 
full  of  spreading  pools  that  caught  the 
rays  cast  by  the  glowing  embers  in  the 
engine's  fire-box,  and,  seeming  to  hold 
them  for  an  instant  in  dull  reflection, 
threw  them  weakly  back.  And  now  the 
pavements  cease  altogether ;  no  longer 
are  there  any  gas-lamps  or  electric 
lights  to  reveal  the  dripping  squalor, 
but  as  one  looks  ahead  there  are  to  be 


"AS   THE   SPARKS   FLY   UPWARD          19 

seen  by  the  spreading  illumination  of 
the  headlight  only  the  shining,  converg 
ing  rails,  and  between  them,  and  on 
either  side,  the  sodden,  half-frozen  earth. 
Now  only  infrequent  buildings  start  into 


2O  STORIES  OF   THE   RAILWAY 


view ;  but  there  appear  instead  long, 
shadowy  lines  of  freight-cars,  apparently 
innumerable,  drawn  up  on  either  side 
of  the  track,  by  which  the  engine  thun 
ders  with  reverberating  clatter  —  the 
strange  but  still  familiar  characters, 
letters,  and  names  on  their  many-col 
ored  sides — the  stars,  the  diamonds, 
the  crosses,  the  often-repeated  initials,  the 
numbers,  reaching  sometimes  into  the 
tens  of  thousands — only  showing  for  an 
instant  in  the  dim  rays  cast  by  the  single 
light  in  the  engine,  and  then  quickly 
blotted  out  by  the  broad  hand  of  dark 
ness.  At  length  those,  too,  are  gone,  and 
now  there  is  nothing  to  be  seen  but  the 
occasional  hut  of  some  switch-tender, 
and  the  constantly  recurring  telegraph 
poles  that  so  rapidly  flash  in  and  out  of 
sight.  Far  behind  appears  in  the  sky  a 
dull,  orange  glow  that  marks  the  posi 
tion  of  the  town  that  has  been  left  be 
hind,  but  all  before  is  unbroken  black- 


AS   THE   SPARKS   FLY   UPWARD         21 


ness.  Now,  at  last,  the  train  has  reached 
the  open  country,  Irby  pushes  the  throt 
tle-valve  still  farther  open,  and  the  engine, 
with  a  quiver,  almost  such  as  a  spirited 
horse  will  give  at  the  touch  of  the  spur, 
plunges  more  swiftly  forward,  and  finally 
tears  along  at  almost  full  running  speed, 
over  fifty  miles  an  hour  through  the 
night. 

The  narrow  place  in  which  the  men  are 
seated,  face  to  face,  is  but  dimly  illumin 
ated.  They  are  neither  of  them  particular 
ly  exceptional-looking  persons  ;  you  might 
see  their  like  almost  any  day  through 
an  engine's  window  and  not  turn  to  look 
again,  and  still  their  faces  are  not  without 
a  certain  stern  significance — the  signifi 
cance  to  be  found  in  the  countenances 
of  most  men  who  have  for  any  length  of 
time  held  what  might  be  called  "non 
commissioned  "  office  in  the  army  of  la 
bor,  where,  though  opportunity  of  honor  is 
rare,  responsibility  is  great  and  incessant. 


22  STORIES   OF   THE   RAILWAY 

Irby,  ten  years  the  older  of  the  two, 
heavy,  but  with  a  muscular  strength  that 
enables  him  to  move  with  perfect  ease  in 
spite  of  his  stoutness,  has  in  his  counte 
nance  that  indescribable  something  that 
indicates  firmness,  even  obstinacy  ;  while 
in  the  mobile  features,  more  shifting 
glance,  and  more  changeful  expression  of 
his  companion  you  could  as  readily  detect 
the  equally  evident,  but  more  subtle  evi 
dences  of  weakness  and  irresolution.  And 
yet  he  was  a  pretty  fellow  enough  with  his 
thick,  lustrous,  black  hair,  and  his  small, 
pointed  mustache,  his  highly  colored 
cheeks  and  his  dull,  dark  eyes.  Of  grace 
ful  build  too — his  belt  was  drawn  about  a 
waist  as  small  almost  as  a  woman's — slight 
but  lithesome,  a  man  to  surprise  you  with 
unsuspected  strength. 

"  Don't  it  make  you  feel,  Dan,  as  if  we 
were  regularly  out  in  the  cold,"  he  said, 
"  to  be  on  this  job  to-night  ?  " 

"  Well,  you  see,"  answered  Irby,  argu- 


"  AS  THE   SPARKS   FLY   UPWARD  "      23 

mentatively,  "  all  the  other  boys  have  got 
sweethearts  or  wives,  and  it's  only  natural 
they  should  want  the  evening  to  them 
selves.  Now  what's  Christmas  Eve  to  us 
— you,  who  haven't  got  a  belonging  in  the 
world,  as  you  say,  and  I " 

Irby  paused,  whether  or  not  he  saw 
something  worthy  of  attention  in  what 
seemed  the  impenetrable  night,  Spurlock 
could  not  determine,  but  the  engineer 
looked  through  the  window  with  what  ap 
peared  increased  attention. 

"  Tain't  much  like  one's  general  notion 
of  a  Christmas,"  he  added  at  length. 

"No,"  answered  Spurlock. 

Neither  spoke  again  for  some  time,  and 
Spurlock  busied  himself  with  the  flapping 
canvas  curtain  that  gave  doubtful  shelter 
to  the  occupants  of  the  cab,  for  the  icy 
wind  blew  briskly  as  the  scudding  clouds 
attested. 

"Let  me  see,"  said  Irby  at  length. 
"  This  time  of  the  year  rather  lends  itself 


24  STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 


to  reckoning— how  long  is  it  now  that 
we've  travelled  along  together  ?  " 

"Going  on  eight  months,"  answered 
Spurlock,  "from  the  time  when  you  first 
set  me  straight." 

Irby  glanced  across  at  the  man  before 
him.  "  Set  him  straight."  Yes,  he  had 
11  set  him  straight,"  and  the  memory 
came  to  him  of  what  Spurlock  had  been, 
a  picture  rose  before  him  of  how  Spurlock 
looked  when  he  first  saw  him.  A  thin, 
bent  form,  with  pallid  face,  and  tremb 
ling,  it  would  almost  seem  palsied,  hands, 
dressed  in  a  mysterious  garment  that  was 
only  a  remote  suggestion  of  a  coat,  and 
with  all  his  other  clothes  correspondingly 
frayed  and  tattered.  A  being,  coming 
from  no  one  knew  where,  and  going  no 
one  cared  whither — slinking  out  to  bask 
in  the  sunshine,  as  if  doubtful  if  the  world, 
which  afforded  him  so  little,  might  not 
grudge  and  deny  him  even  this  ;  leading- 
one  of  those  mysterious,  almost  reptilian 


AS   THE   SPARKS    FLY    UPWARD  "      25 


existences  in  the  dark  holes  and  corners 
of  the  earth,  which,  were  they  not  so  com 
mon,  would  seem  more  awful  and  more 
significant,  but  which,  seen  every  day,  we 
scarcely  notice  and  easily  allow  to  pass 
from  memory. 

Irby  had  first  seen  the  ill-looking  creat 
ure  loitering  about  the  confines  of  the  sta 
tion,  sometimes  penetrating  even  to  the 
engine-yard  and  standing  at  gaze  before 
the  big,  resplendent,  perfectly  "groom 
ed  "  locomotive — looking  at  it  revenge 
fully,  as  if  resentful  of  the  fact  that  this 
thing  of  iron  and  steel  should  receive 
such  care,  when  he,  a  creature  of  flesh 
and  blood,  was  so  destitute.  Such  as  he 
was,  he  had  been  the  jest,  the  jeer  of  the 
whole  place.  There  was  no  one  so  insig 
nificant  that  he  did  not  dare  to  scoff  at 
him,  and  it  seemed  that  there  was  no  in 
dignity  that  the  poor  creature  would  not 
endure.  But  one  day  from  his  lofty  post 
Irby  had  noticed  that  a  row  was  going  on. 


26  STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 


In  that  neighborhood— in  the  circles  in 
which  his  locomotive  moved,  that  was  a 
thing  of  no  uncommon  occurrence,  but 
this  particular  difficulty  seemed  more  seri 
ous  than  was  commonly  the  case. 

"  What's  the  matter  ?  "  he  shouted. 

"  Joe  Bannager's  been  givin1  the  tramp 
mor'n  he  can  stand  an'  he's  showed  fight," 
was  the  answer. 

Irby  let  himself  down  from  the  engine 
and  joined  the  crowd  just  in  time  to  see 
the  burly  Bannager  very  neatly  knocked 
out  of  time  by  the  now  animated  vaga 
bond,  to  the  admiration  of  the  on-look- 

ers. 

"  If  you've  got  spirit  enough  for  that," 
said  Irby,  looking  curiously  at  the  now- 
erect  figure  of  the  stranger,  "  you've  got 
spirit  enough  to  be  a  man.  Come  with 
me." 

He  had  taken  Spurlock  over  to  the  en 
gine,  and  in  its  torrid  shade  had  inspected 
him  more  thoroughly. 


"  AS   THE   SPARKS   FLY   UPWARD          27 

"  If  I  gave  you  money,  would  you  drink 
it  up  ?  "  he  asked. 

"  Try  me  and  see,"  said  the  man. 

Irby  handed  him  a  bill,  and  the  next 
day  there  had  appeared  before  him  a  per 
son  whom  he  did  not  at  first  recognize. 
It  was  Spurlock,  decked  in  a  suit  of  the 
poorest  clothing,  but  clean  and  decent 
looking. 

"Give  me  something  to  do,"  he  had 
said. 

Irby  had  again  looked  at  him  scruti- 
nizingly.  It  had  always  been  his — Irby's 
boast,  that  he  knew  a  man,  when  he  saw 
one,  who  had  anything  in  him,  and  after 
a  moment's  contemplation,  which  the 
other  had  borne  unflinchingly,  he  spoke 
doubtfully. 

"  My  fireman's  laid  up,  perhaps  I  might 
get  you  taken  on." 

"  All  right,"  answered  Spurlock. 
"You've  picked  me  out  of  the  gutter, 
now  set  me  on  the  walk." 


28  STORIES   OF   THE   RAILWAY 


And  this,  Irby  thought,  was  the  same 
man  who  now  sat  opposite  to  him.     In 
deed,    Spurlock    had    changed.      As    he 
quickly  emerged  from  his  state  of  degra 
dation,  he  displayed  unexpected  intelli 
gence,  exhibiting  a  surprising  knowledge 
about  all  sorts  of  unlikely  things.     Irby, 
who  had  started  in  life  with  only  a  limited 
knowledge  of  reading    and   writing,  but 
who  had  graduated  long  ago  with   "  hon 
ors  "    from  the   great    University   of  the 
Newspapers,  was  thoroughly  able  to  ap 
preciate    higher    acquirements    than    his 
own,   and  both   marvelled  and  admired. 
Spurlock   never   spoke    of  his  past,  and 
Irby  had  never  asked  him   a  question. 
That  it  was  not  the  usual  past  of  a  man 
in  his   position   Irby   felt  sure  ;  but  they 
were  both  of  that   world  that   should  in 
truth  be  called  the    "great   world,"    in 
stead  of  the  insignificant  portion  that  now 
bears  that  name,  where  few  questions  are 
asked,  for  the  reason  that  a  close  knowl- 


"AS   THE   SPARKS    FLY   UPWARD"      29 

edge  of  the  strange  haps  and  mishaps  of 
life  has  dulled  curiosity.  Day  and  night 
they  had  travelled  together  in  the  little 
cab,  over  thousands  of  miles,  through 
heat  and  cold,  through  storm  and  sun 
shine,  and  gradually  there  had  grown  up 
in  Irby  a  real  friendship  for  this  being 
whom  he  had,  as  it  were,  created.  He 
looked  at  Spurlock,  and  reflecting  that 
had  it  not  been  for  him,  the  alert,  self-re 
specting  man,  who  \vas  now  his  compan 
ion  would  have  been  in  a  pauper's  grave 
or  leading  a  life  than  which  any  death 
would  be  better,  he  took  credit  to  himself 
for  what  he  could  almost  regard  as  his 
handiwork,  and  beamed  upon  him  with 
something  like  affection. 

"  Seeing  the  time  it  is,"  said  Spurlock, 
at  length,  "  I've  got  a  Christmas  present 
for  you,  Dan,  and  I  don't  know  but  I 
might  as  well  give  it  to  you  now  as  an 
other  time." 

He  reached  up  and  took  down  his  coat 


30  STORIES   OF    THE    RAILWAY 


from  the  place  where  it  hung,  then  draw 
ing  out  a  tobacco-pouch,  cheaply  em 
broidered,  handed  it  across  to  the  engi 
neer.  Irby  took  it,  opened  it,  and  found 
instead  of  tobacco,  a  carefully  folded 
bill. 

"  The  money  you  lent  me  that  time, 
you  know,"  explained  Spurlock. 

Irby  stretched  out  his  hand,  with  the 
powerful,  blunted  fingers,  to  the  young 
er  man,  who  took  it  and  shook  it  roughly 
with  an  awkward  consciousness.  Neither 
spoke. 

The  wide  plains  that  lay  around  the 
city — mere  bare,  uncultivable  barrens — 
had  been  swiftly  traversed,  and  now  the 
track  ran  over  land  partly  uncleared.  In 
and  out  it  darted  through  the  thick  woods, 
plunging  into  the  narrow  openings  among 
the  dark,  serried  trunks  and  spreading 
branches,  as  if  into  some  tunnelled  moun 
tain. 

"  You've  been  the  making  of  me,  Dan," 


AS   THE    SPARKS    FLY    UPWARD          3! 


Spurlock  went  on,  "  and  if  I  come  to  any 
thing  now  it'll  be  your  doing." 

"The  engine's  seemed  a  different  place 
since  you've  been  on  it,  Jeff,"  he  said, 
quietly,  "  an'  so  I  guess  we're  square." 

Another  of  those  long  silences  followed, 
which  will  occur  between  people  who  are 
constantly  together — one  of  those  pauses 
that  indicate  intimacy  more  fully  than  any 
speech. 

"  I  wasn't  always  what  you  found  me, 
•  Dan,"  said  Spurlock,  finally. 

Irby  glanced  at  his  companion. 

"  But  I  began  bad,"  the  other  went  on, 
"  and  I  kept  on  growing  worse.  I  was  the 
black  sheep  of  a  particularly  white  flock, 
and,  by  contrast,  my  color  only  showed 
up  the  more.  Where  I  was  born,  or  what 
or  when,  don't  matter.  I  wouldn't  like  to 
show  disrespect  for  any  of  my  highly  re 
spectable  relations  by  bringing  them  into 
any  such  unfortunate  society  as  mine." 

He  paused,  and  the  expression  of  reck- 


32  STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 


lessness  that  had  lain  on  his  countenance, 
almost  like  a  mask — so  evidently  unnat 
ural  was  it  —  seemed  suddenly  to  be 
snatched  away. 

"  The  fiend  take  it,  Dan,"  said  he, 
"  there's  something  in  this  cursed  time 
that  sets  you  remembering." 

Irby's  face  darkened  ;  it  appeared  as  if 
the  past  had  also  come  up  before  him  with 
unusual  vividness,  and  that  the  vision  was 
disquieting  and  painful. 

"  I  don't  think  I  ever  came  near  being 
respectable  in  my  life  but  once,"  contin 
ued  Spurlock,  dully,  almost  as  if  some 
strange  power  were  forcing  him  to  speak 
— as  if  volition  had  nothing  to  do  with  it. 

"  But,"  he  went  on,  "  we're  generally 
standing  on  the  ground  even  when  we're 
looking  at  the  clouds.  Oh,  of  course  it 
was  a  woman  that  did  it.  You,  Dan,  you 
can't  understand  that ;  you — you've  the 
face  of  a  true  misogynist.  You  see,"  he 
broke  out,  "  I  haven't  forgot  all  that  my 


"AS   THE   SPARKS   FLY   UPWARD          33 

little  '  fresh-water '  college  taught  me. 
You're  the  kind  that  are  superior  to  that 
inferior  influence. "  "I  really  believe  that 
I  could  have  reformed  then,"  murmured 
Spurlock  after  another  pause,  "  for  I  loved 
her.  Strange  how  you  feel  when  you 
really  love  a  woman.  There  seems  to 
come  out  of  the  very  holes  and  corners  of 
your  being  feelings  and  sentiments  and 
aspirations  that  you  never  knew  you  had 
before.  Mind  I  don't  say  that  the  same 
cause  doesn't  sometimes  work  a  very  dif 
ferent  way  on  your  nature — doesn't  stir 
up  and  set  moving  a  number  of  dark,  hid 
eous  things  also  —  passions,  jealousies, 
hatreds — that  you  never  suspected  were 
in  you.  Oh,  it's  a  queer  thing  this  love — 
it's  like  a  streak  of  varnish  across  the  nat 
ural  wood  that  brings  out  the  beauty  of 
the  grain  and  the  ugliness  of  the  knots  as 
well.  I  loved  her  from  the  first  time  I  set 
my  eyes  on  her  pretty,  pale  face.  Oh, 
don't  be  frightened.  I'm  not  going  to  tell 


34  STORIES   OF   THE   RAILWAY 


you  a  yarn,  for  there's  none  to  tell.  But 
Agnes  Holcombe  was  the  only  one  who 
could  ever  have  made  anything  out  of  me. " 
"Women,"  said  Irby,  slowly,  "do  a 
deal  of  good  when  they  don't— do  a  deal 
of  harm." 

"  She  could  have  been  the  making  of 

me.     But  circumstances " 

k<  How  long  ago  was  it  ?  "  interrupted 
Irby. 

"About  eighteen  months." 
"  Eighteen  months."  With  the  instinct 
that  leads  every  one  to  measure  the  near 
ness  or  remoteness  of  an  event  by  its  re 
lation  in  time  to  their  own  lives,  Irby 
thought  of  himself  as  he  had  been  a  year 
and  a  half  before.  That,  he  remembered, 
was  before  his  quarrel  with  Mabel — before 
the  final  separation.  He  ground  his  teeth 
in  sudden  rage.  Could  he  not  get  the 
miserable  affair  out  of  his  mind  ;  must 
everything  he  heard  or  saw  always  serve 
to  remind  him  of  it? 


"AS   THE   SPARKS   FLY    UPWARD"      35 

The  train  had  now  for  some  time  been 
on  its  way,  dashing  by  isolated  farm 
houses,  usually,  at  this  hour,  merely 
black  shapes  in  the  dim  landscape,  but 
to-night  with  windows  all  alight  ;  past 
scattered  groups  of  cottages  where  the 
smoke,  rolling  comfortably  from  the 
chimneys  suggested  glowing  and  gener 
ous  hearths ;  in  and  out  of  villages  ; 
where  a  quickly  opened,  quickly  closed 
door  would  often  suddenly  disclose  some 
bright  interior.  And  now  the  spreading 
glow  in  the  sky  before  them  proved  that 
they  were  again  approaching  a  city. 
Stronger,  brighter,  more  diffused  it  grew 
as  the  train  spun  swiftly  on  ;  and  finally 
the  many  detached  points  of  light  showed 
that  they  were  quite  near.  Again  the  en 
gine  plunged  among  long  lines  of  coal- 
trucks  and  freight-cars — again  clattered 
by  the  echoing  walls  of  great  factories, 
and  finally,  at  decreased  speed,  puffed 
into  the  city.  As  it  chanced  in  this  par- 


36  STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 


ticular  place  the  tracks  lay  along  streets 
that  crossed  some  of  the  great  thorough 
fares,  and  sometimes  for  a  short  distance 
even  ran  in  them.  It  was  hardly  more 
than  nine  o'clock,  and  the  sidewalks  were 
thronged.  It  seemed  as  if  the  whole  town 
had  turned  out,  and  yet  there  must  have 
been  many  who  were  at  home.  Every 
shop  was  open — was  brilliant  with  the  best 
display  it  was  possible  for  it  to  make. 
Here,  as  at  the  place  they  had  left,  it  had 
evidently  been  snowing  during  the  day, 
but  here  the  wind  had  blown  boisterously 
and  long  enough  to  dry  the  walks  and 
bring  a  crackling  sheet  of  ice  on  the  sur 
face  of  the  street  puddles.  There  was  a 
briskness  in  the  air  well  accordant  with 
the  time,  and  there  was  an  animation  in 
the  crowd  that  clearly  indicated  that  it 
was  no  concourse  such  as  might  ordi 
narily  be  found  in  and  before  the  stores. 
It  was  much  larger,  it  was  much  more 
alert,  and  it  was  much  more  self-satisfied 


AS   THE    SPARKS    FLY    UPWARD          37 


and  self-important ;  certainly  it  was  much 
jollier.  You  might  have  jostled  it  as 
much  as  you  pleased  without  exciting 
anything  but  good-natured  remonstrance, 
you  could  tread  on  its  toes  with  nearly 
perfect  impunity.  It  was  a  true  Christ 
mas  crowd  in  every  aspect  and  every  at 
tribute — baskets,  bundles,  and  all — and  as 
the  great  engine  slowly  ground  its  way 
along,  the  bell  sounding  with  regular 
brazen  clang,  the  two  men  in  the  cab 
gazed  upon  the  animated  spectacle  with 
greedy  eyes.  They  looked  upon  it  all  as 
aliens  in  a  double  sense — separated  from 
it  in  situation  and  in  mood — and  the 
knowledge  of  their  twofold  remoteness 
filled  each  with  a  rebellious  bitterness 
that  strengthened  as  they  went  on.  It  all 
seemed  like  some  mocking  show  prepared 
for  their  special  torment— some  deluding 
mirage  as  tantalizing  as  the  semblance  of 
water  is  to  the  thirsty  traveller  of  the 
desert. 


38  STORIES   OF   THE   RAILWAY 

The  stop  in  the  dark,  nearly  deserted 
depot,  was  not  long,  and  soon  they 
were  out  again  in  the  populous  quar 
ters  of  the  town.  It  was  Christmas  time 
at  its  brightest  and  best — cheerful  Noel 
in  its  most  comfortable  mood.  It  was 
Christmas  Eve — more  mirthful,  better 
perhaps  than  Christmas  itself— as  a 
promise  is  often  better  than  a  fulfilment. 
That  feeling  of  the  time  that  calls  upon 
all  to  "  eat,  drink,  and  be  merry,"  found 
most  ample  manifestation — the  sense  of 
human  fellowship  that,  let  what  may  be 
said,  is  just  a  little  stronger  on  and  about 
the  wonderful  December  day  than  at  any 
other  time  of  the  year,  was  evident  every 
where.  Gazing  like  prisoners  through 
prison  bars,  the  two  men  avidly  drank  in 
the  scene,  its  very  geniality  making  them 
the  more  morose. 

And  as  the  engine  passed  on  again  into 
the  desolate  country — between  the  brown 
banks  and  broken  fences — the  men  were 


AS   THE   SPARKS    FLY    UPWARD  "      39 


almost  tempted  to  rub  their  eyes  and  ask 
themselves  if  really  what  they  had  seen 
had  not  been  a  dream,  so  sudd.en  had 
been  its  appearance,  so  apparently  doubt 
ful  its  reality,  even  while  it  was  before 
them,  and  so  absolute  its  eclipse. 

"  Agnes  Holcombe,"  said  Irby,  half  to 
drive  from  his  mind  the  memories  that 
tormented  him  ;  half  to  lead  Spurlock  to 
talk  further  of  himself. 

"Agnes  Holcombe,"  repeated  Spur- 
lock.  "That  of  course  wasn't  her  real 
name,  as  I  soon  found  out." 

"Not  her  real  name?"  Irby  half 
asked. 

"No,"  said  Spurlock.  "Though 
there's  bufc  little  to  tell  I  might  as  well 
tell  you  that  little.  It  all  happened  out  at 
Arapago." 

"Arapago?"  repeated  Irby,  glancing 
sharply  around. 

"Yes,  Arapago,"  continued  Spurlock. 
11  It  was  one  of  my  respectable  times — 


40  STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 

when  I  was  still  struggling.  I  was  clerk 
in  one  of  the  big  freight  depots.  One 
night  I  was  sitting  in  that  park  that  looks 
out  over  the  lake  when  I  saw  a  woman  on 
the  next  bench  to  mine.  I  saw  that  she 
was  pretty  and  that  she  was  crying.  The 
two  things  were  too  much  for  me — they 
ought  to  be  for  any  man.  I  made  an  ex 
cuse  to  speak  to  her,  she  answered  me 
and  we  had  a  long  talk.  I  asked  her 
where  she  lived,  but  although  she  would 
not  tell  me,  she  promised  to  meet  me  on 
the  night  after  the  next,  at  the  same  place. 
She  kept  her  word,  and  it  was  the  first  of 
many  meetings.  Dan,  I  loved  that  woman, 
and,  what  is  the  strangest  thing,  I  loved 
her  as  I  never  loved  another.  It  almost 
seemed  as  if  I  didn't  want  her  to  love  me  ; 
why,  man,  the  ground  she  walked  on,  it 
seemed  to  me,  was  the  only  thing  that  I 
was  fit  to  touch.  There  are  some  \vomen 
who  can  make  you  feel  like  that,  though, 
like  as  not,  they're  laughing  at  you  all 


AS   THE    SPARKS   FLY   UPWARD          41 


the  time.  One  night  I  followed  her,  to 
find  out  if  I  could  know  something  about 
her. 

"  Well,"  said  Irby,  impatiently,  and  yet 
hesitatingly. 

"  I  followed  her  to  a  pretty  little  house 
just  where  the  city  begins  to  breakup  and 
you  get  a  little  air  and  space." 

"Yes,"  said  Irby,  looking  at  his  fire 
man  with  a  curious  glitter  in  his  eyes. 

"  It  was  in  Canestoga  Street,  number 
one  hundred  and  seventeen — queer  how 
you'll  remember  those  little  things — and 
there  she  went  in,  with  that  air  you  know 
that  one  has  when  going  into  a  familiar 
place." 

"  Yes,"  said  Irby,  as  he  leaned  forward 
to  look  at  one  of  the  gauges,  and  then 
again  fixed  his  eyes  on  Spurlock  with  the 
same  intensity  of  gaze. 

"  She  was  mad  enough  when  she  found 
out  what  I'd  done,  but  she  soon  forgave 
me.  And  it  was  there  we  met  when  her 


42  STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 


husband  was  away."  He  paused,  then 
added  quickly,  "What's  the  matter, 
Dan?" 

4 '  Nothing, ' '  answered  Irby  ;  "  go  on. " 
"  Yes,  and  when  he  was  there  she'd 
come  to  the  park  sometimes  ;  but  I  gen 
erally  saw  her  in  the  garden.  I  learned 
all  about  her  from  the  people  in  the  neigh 
borhood,  but  I  never  let  her  know  that  I 
knew  the  truth,  though  she  must  have 
suspected  that  I  did.  I've  seen  enough 
not  to  appear  to  know  any  more  than  a 
woman  wants  that  you  should.  She  was 
married,  so  they  told  me,  to  a  man  a 
good  deal  older  than  herself,  who,  though 
he  was  generally  well  considered,  was 
thought  by  the  neighbors  a  little  too  strict 
and  glum  for  her.  I  imagined  I  saw  how 
it  was.  He  was  an  engineer  on  one  of  the 
Western  roads,  away  half  the  time,  and 
the  poor  young  thing  was  left  all  alone.  I 
think  he  made  her  pretty  unhappy,  and 
so  the  inevitable  happened,  and  I  hap- 


AS    THE    SPARKS    FLY    UPWARD  "      43 


pened  to  be  the  inevitable,  though  in  this 
case  the  inevitable  wasn't  so  very  much 
after  all." 

"  Go  on,"  said  Irby. 

"  Though  neither  of  us  ever  spoke 
about  it,  I  gathered  from  what  I  picked 
up  that  it  was  only  when  her  husband — 
Shaw,  that  was  the  engineer's  name — was 
away  that  I  could  appear.  Then,  when  it 
was  dark  enough,  I'd  slip  over  the  white 
picket-fence  and  sit  with  her  in  the  arbor 
under  the  grape-vines.  I  never  kissed  her 
but — once " 

Before  Spurlock  had  time  to  do  more 
than  instinctively  raise  his  arm  in  defence, 
Irby  was  upon  him,  and  with  an  iron 
wrench  that  he  had  snatched  from  its 
place  had  felled  him  with  one  blow  to  the 
floor,  where  he  lay,  an  almost  shapeless 
heap,  on  the  hot,  riveted,  iron  plates. 

What  Irby  consciously  noticed  next  was 
that  the  train  was  swiftly  running  over  the 


44  STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 


causeway  built  across  the  widespreading 
marshes  that  lay  an  hour  and  more  be 
yond  the  last  stopping-place.  It  was  not 
that  the  sky  was  clearer  and  therefore 
gave  more  light,  but  there  was  more  of  it, 
stretching  as  it  did  to  the  horizon,  and 
Irby  could  distinctly  see  the  dull,  sullen 
waters  above  which,  on  the  embankment, 
the  locomotive  so  swiftly  moved  along  ; 
could  mark  the  acres  and  acres  of  low- 
lying  land  partially  covered  with  rank 
grass  and  partially  with  tall,  tangled, 
aquatic  plants.  It  was  a  sad,  desolate 
place  at  any  time,  but  now,  seen  only  by 
the  uncertain  light  of  the  stars — the  wind 
had  torn  the  clouds  from  the  sky — it  was 
indeed  forbidding  and  awful. 

In  Irby's  mind  was  an  uneasy  con 
sciousness  that  something  unusual  had 
happened,  what,  he  half  knew,  yet  hardly 
could  have  told.  With  the  instinct  of 
his  calling,  he  glanced  first  at  all  the 
cocks  and  levers  about  him,  then  looked 


"AS   THE    SPARKS    FLY    UPWARD          45 

cautiously  around.  Yes,  there  it  was, 
more  like  some  bundle  of  old  clothes  than 
the  form  of  a  man,  for  Spurlockhad  fallen 
face  down,  with  his  arms  doubled  up 
under  him,  and  there  was  no  pallid  coun 
tenance,  no  worn,  blackened  hand  to 
show  what  was  really  there.  Irby  did  not 
start,  he  had  half-prepared  himself  for 
what  he  was  to  see,  but  only  gazed  in 
tently,  almost  apathetically,  at  the  ob 
ject  at  his  feet.  Then  his  eyes  caught 
something  that  needed  attention  in  the 
machinery,  and  he,  with  action  almost  as 
automatic  as  that  of  any  one  of  the  en 
gine's  appliances,  set  it  right.  The  fires 
must  have  burnt  low,  he  thought  ;  but 
how  could  he  replenish  them  ?  Dulled  as 
his  mind  was,  it  seemed  an  insurmount 
able  difficulty  that  Spurlock's  body  lay  on 
the  floor— how  could  it  be  possible  to 
open  the  furnace  door  ?  how  shovel  in  the 
coal  ?  But  gradually  perception  became 
clearer — that  the  engine  should  be  run 


46  STORIES    OF   THE   RAILWAY 


all  right  seemed  to  him  more  important 
than  anything  else— and  he  left  the  shelf- 
like  seat  on  which  he  had  been  sitting, 
and  picking  up  the  body  carefully,  placed 
it  in  a  corner,  with  the  back  against  the 
wall  of  the  cab  and  the  side  of  the  op 
posite  bench.  Then  he  threw  open  the 
furnace-door.  With  the  glare  of  what 
seemed  to  him  the  nether  pit,  the  tongues 
of  flame,  writhing  and  twisting  in  the 
strong  draft,  leaped  up,  licking  around 
the  iron  edges  of  their  prison-house.  The 
whole  place  was  illuminated  with  the 
fierce,  ruddy  light,  and  even  the  face  of 
the  man  whom  he  had  struck  down 
seemed  to  gain  even  something  more  than 
its  natural  color.  Drawing  back  the  can 
vas  screen  he  grasped  Spurlock's  shovel 
and  cast  the  coals  into  the  furnace's 
mouth  ;  then  he  carefully  drew  together 
the  curtain,  shut  the  opened  door,  mount 
ed  to  his  seat,  and  glanced  down  the 
straight  road  that  seemed  almost  to  slip 


AS   THE   SPARKS   FLY    UPWARD         47 


under  the  engine  and  glide  away.  Fan 
cies,  rather  than  such  positive  thoughts 
as  it  would  seem  should  be  the  natural 
and  unavoidable  outcome  of  the  situation, 
filled  his  brain.  First,  there  started  into 
quick  vision  the  astonishment,  the  horror 
of  the  officials,  when  he  should  ride  into 
the  next  station  with  a  murdered  man  on 
the  engine  with  him.  There  seemed 
something  so  grotesquely  ludicrous  in  the 
idea,  that  he  almost  laughed  aloud.  Then 
he  listlessly  thought  of  what  the  news 
papers  would  say — of  the  heavy  headlines 
and  sensational  sentences.  People  would 
talk  about  it  the  next  day  —  Christmas 
Day — Christmas  of  all  days.  The  sense 
of  the  awful  inharmony  between  what  he 
had  done  and  what  the  feeling  of  the  time 
enjoyed,  brought  him  the  first  thrill  of 
horror  that  he  had  felt.  His  regular  res 
piration  was  broken  by  a  quick,  raucus 
gasp,  and  on  his  brow  he  felt  the  chilly 
dew  of  terror. 


48  STORIES    OF    THE   RAILWAY 


Christmas  Eve  !  It  seemed  to  Irby 
that  everything  of  any  consequence  to 
him  had  happened  on  Christmas  Eve.  It 
was  one  Christmas  Eve  that  he  had  been 
married  ;  it  was  on  the  next  Christmas 
Eve  that  the  baby  was  born  ;  it  was  only 
just  before  Christmas  Eve,  a  year  past,  that 
they— Mabel  and  he— had  their  final  mis 
understanding  and  had  parted  ;  he  swear 
ing  that  though  she  might  wish  to  seek 
his  forgiveness  she  should  not  have  the 
chance.  So  he  had  gone  to  a  distant 
place,  where,  under  a  new  name— perhaps 
even  then  apprehensive  that  he  might  not 
be  able  to  withstand  her  pleading  should 
she  attempt  to  soften  his  heart— he  had 
sought  new  employment,  while  she  had 
fled  he  knew  not  whither. 

He  had  often  wondered,  sometimes 
doubted,  whether  he  had  not  been  unjust 
to  her.  There  were  even  times  when  he 
had  accused  himself  of  blind  cruelty  to 
her,  and  had  felt  impelled,  then  and  there, 


"AS   THE   SPARKS   FLY    UPWARD         49 

to  seek  her  out  wherever  she  might  be, 
and  ask  her  forgiveness.  But  he  had  been 
too  deeply  hurt ;  the  wound,  to  one  of  his 
nature,  was  too  grievous  to  permit  any 
such  action,  and  he  had  quickly  fallen 
back  into  his  old  state  of  obduracy  and 
inert  despair.  For  days  before  he  had 
finally  spoken  to  her,  he  had  watched  and 
waited,  had  reasoned  and  argued,  until  it 
almost  seemed  that  he  had  lost  all  power 
of  continuous  thought,  so  distracted  had 
he  become  ;  and  now,  since  they  had  been 
separated,  he  had  weighed  the  evidence 
again  and  again  ;  had  never  ceased  labo 
riously  to  revolve  the  matter  in  his  mind; 
to  seek  to  comprehend  her  motives  and  to 
test  his  own.  He  could  not  have  made  a 
mistake.  It  was  true  that  she  had  never 
confessed  anything,  but  again  she  had 
never  denied  anything,  merely  contenting 
herself  with  an  indignant  silence,  or  with 
impetuous  assertion  that  she  disdained  to 
defend  herself  against  suspicion,  adding 


5O  STORIES    OF   THE    RAILWAY 


that  if  he  did  not  trust  her  he  did  not  love 
her,  and  that  they  had  best  part. 

And  so  he,  unable  to  control  the  fierce 
jealousy,  the  rugged  wrong-side  of  his 
strong  love,  and  she  feigning  or  feeling 
the  deep  indignation  of  affronted  woman 
hood,  had  given  to  the  wind  the  vows 
they  had  both  made,  that  they  would 
thereafter  cling  to  one  another,  even  until 
the  last  great  parting.  No,  he  must  have 
been  right — there  was  so  much  to  justify 
him.  Though  he  had  imagined  her  so 
different  from  other  women,  was  there 
really  any  reason  why  she  should  be  so  ? 
There  was  her  own  sister — beautiful, 
headstrong,  erring  Ethel — and  might  not 
Mabel  really  have  been — was  it  not  in 
deed  reasonable  to  believe,  that  she  was 
as  vain,  as  frivolous,  as  light  as  the  other  ? 
Was  it  not  highly  probable  that  as  one 
sister  had  been,  so  the  other  would  be  ? 
And  yet  at  first  he  had  felt  that  she  was 
of  another  nature  than  this  wilful  being 


"AS   THE   SPARKS   FLY   UPWARD"      51 

who  had  fled  from  the  tedium  of  a  life  in 
which  there  was  only  peace  and  suffi 
ciency,  to  seek  the  excitement  and  lavish- 
ness  that  she  seemed  to  crave — had  fled 
from  the  small  but  pretty  house,  on  the 
city's  outskirts,  where  Mabel  had  seemed 
so  contented,  and  where  during  the  long, 
lustrous  summer  evenings  he  had  timidly 
courted  her  ;  where,  on  the  brisk,  brilliant 
December  night,  three  years  ago,  he  had 
finally  married  her. 

It  was  about  her  sister,  Ethel,  that  they 
had  had  their  first  quarrel — he  peremp 
torily  refusing  ever  to  let  his  wife  see  or 
communicate  with  one  whom  he  had 
thought  so  unworthy  of  her  love  and 
countenance,  and  she,  only  after  argu 
ment  and  contention,  finally  yielding.  It 
had  always  been  disagreeable  to  him  to 
think  of  Ethel  as  his  wife's  sister.  It  was 
with  real  relief  that,  in  the  first  year  of 
their  marriage,  he  had  listened  to  Mabel 
as  she  told  him  that  she  had  received 


52  STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 


news  of  Ethel's  death  in  one  of  the  hos 
pitals  of  an  Eastern  city,  and  reflected 
that  this  being,  whose  life  was  so  worth 
less  to  herself  and  others,  could  no  longer 
come  between  them. 

Yes,  Mabel  had  always  been  light- 
hearted  and  pleasure-loving.  But  grant 
ing  only  this,  was  not  that  enough  to 
cause  difficulty  in  time  ?  Was  he  the 
man — middle-aged,  serious,  and  a  trifle 
taciturn — to  satisfy  such  a  woman  ;  pret 
ty,  with  the  desire,  and  even  the  right  to 
have  her  beauty  recognized  ;  naturally 
longing  for  the  enjoyment  that  youth  de 
mands  as  its  peculiar  prerogative  ?  Was 
it  not  only  natural  that  she  should  fancy 
some  one  nearer  her  own  age,  some  one 
with  a  readier  wit,  and  more  adaptable 
manner  ?  He  was  as  conscious  of  his 
own  shortcomings  as  he  was  of  his  inabil 
ity  to  overcome  them  ;  but  he  neverthe 
less  suffered  grievously,  and  had  been 
continually  on  the  lookout  for  some  sign 


AS    THE    SPARKS    FLY    UPWARD  "      53 


of  disapproval,  of  dislike,  on  her  part.  It 
is  true  it  never  came,  but  he  was  always 
apprehensive  ;  it  was  the  seed-time  for 
suspicion,  and  the  soil  in  which  the  grain 
might  come  to  deadly  fruit  was  morbidly 
rich.  It  was  only  to  be  expected  that  he 
should  hearken  to  what  people  said. 
When  he  had  received  the  first  anony 
mous  letter  he  had  sworn  that  he  would 
not  read  the  thing;  but  when,  with  trem 
bling  hand  and  quick-beating  heart,  he 
had  first  glanced  along  the  cowardly, 
feigned  writing — as  he  deliberately  read 
it  again,  as  he  had  read  all  that  succeeded 
it,  he  had  in  his  heart  believed  what  was 
said.  Had  she  not  acted  strangely  for  a 
long  time,  as  if  she  were  keeping  some 
thing  from  him  ?  All  seemed  calculated 
to  strengthen  him  in  his  apprehensions, 
all  to  bear  witness  against  her.  And 
when  he  had  shown  her  the  letters,  with 
their  blackening  tale,  though  she  had  ap 
peared  indignant,  outraged,  even  then 


54  STORIES    OF   THE    RAILWAY 


she  had  denied  nothing,  and  had  refused 
to  defend,  to  exculpate  herself.  It  had 
been  a  brief  but  violent  scene,  and  then 
they — she  proudly,  and  he  besottedly 
jealous  and  passionately  inflexible — had 
separated. 

It  was  a  common  enough  story,  as  he 
knew,  but  in  spite  of  this  knowledge  it 
seemed  strangely  pathetic  to  him.  And 
that  had  been  the  end  of  the  life  that  had 
begun  so  happily,  but  it  had  not  been  the 
end  of  torturing  thought,  of  eternal  ques 
tionings,  of  occasional  self-crimination. 
Now,  with  a  sense  almost  of  relief,  he  re 
flected  that  the  time  of  doubt  was  past 
for  him.  Since  he  had  heard  Spurlock's 
confession  he  need  torment  himself  no 
more.  He  had  been  right.  Her  fancy 
had  been  taken  by  the  good  looks  and 
careless  grace  of  the  stranger,  and  she 
had  forgotten  his  love,  lost  her  love — if 
there  had  really  ever  been  any — for  him. 

It   did  not  require   any  great  time  for 


"AS   THE    SPARKS    FLY   UPWARD"      55 

these  thoughts  to  arise,  to  eddy  giddily 
about,  to  crowd  one  another  in  Irby's 
mind.  And  yet — he  was  thinking  more 
calmly  and  collectedly  now  —  it  was 
strange  that  he  should  have  felt  so  deeply 
about  it  all,  at  this  late  clay,  as  to  have 
been  moved  to  kill  this  man.  And  then 
he  reflected  how  wonderful  it  was  that 
the  poor  creature  whom  in  pity  he  had 
befriended  and  rescued,  should  have 
been  the  man  who  had  robbed  him  of  his 
happiness.  The  injustice — what  seemed 
to  him  almost  the  ingratitude  of  it — 
struck  him  with  sudden  force,  and  he 
glanced  with  quick-kindling  hatred  at  the 
motionless  something  in  the  corner. 

And  all  the  while  the  engine  sped  on, 
thundering  over  bridges,  and  roaring 
through  "cuttings,"  a  terrible,  it  might 
almost  seem  in  its  awful  momentum,  an 
unmanageable  force — sped  on,  pouring  a 
dense  cloud  of  smoke  from  its  swaying 
stack,  and  flinging  into  the  air  myriads 


56  STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 


of  glowing,  dancing  sparks  that  streamed 
behind  in  a  cometic  trail ! 

Now  another  city  lies  not  far  ahead, 
as  Irby  well  knows.  Shall  he  tell  what 
has  happened  and  give  himself  up  ?  Un 
certain  what  to  do,  he  determines  to  do 
nothing.  The  stop  he  knows  will  be  but 
short.  At  so  late  an  hour  there  will  be 
but  few  about  ;  none  at  all  who  will 
think  of  mounting  on  the  engine.  The 
cab  is  so  high  from  the  ground  that  no 
one  passing  on  the  platform  of  the  station 
can  see  into  it.  Why  not  go  as  he  had 
come,  without  allowing  a  person  to  know 
what  had  occurred  ;  then,  in  the  long  un 
broken  run  to  the  next  stopping  place, 
he  would  have  time  to  reflect — decide 
upon  his  ultimate  course. 

Crouching  over  the  lever  he  brought 
the  engine  up  to  the  building  that  gave 
shelter  to  the  travellers,  and  stopped  it, 
trembling  before  the  lighted  windows. 
The  sudden  illumination  disconcerted  him 


"AS   THE   SPARKS    FLY    UPWARD"      57 

somewhat  and  he  turned  to  adjust  the 
tattered,  greasy  curtain  more  carefully. 
His  change  of  position  had  brought  the 
body  within  his  gaze,  and  he  looked  at  it 
now  for  the  first  time  coolly  and  curious 
ly.  Blood  stood  in  almost  inky  black 
spots  on  the  white  face — the  distended 
arms  lay  along  the  floor  in  flaccid,  impo 
tent  immobility.  Had  it  not  been  cow 
ardly  to  take  the  man  unawares  ;  should 
he  not  have  given  Spurlock  a  chance  to 
defend  himself?  He  thought  vaguely 
that  if  the  deed  were  to  be  done  over 
again  he  would  prefer  not  to  do  it  in  that 
way. 

"  Merry  Christmas  !  " 

The  voice  seemed  almost  at  his  elbow, 
and  he  gave  a  great  start.  But  it  was 
only  one  of  the  station  people,  whom  he 
knew,  hurrying  by  on  the  platform  below 
him. 

'*  Merry  Christmas  !  " 

He  was  afraid  that  if  he  did  not  answer 


58  STORIES   OF   THE   RAILWAY 

the  man  might  return,  and  so  he  shout 
ed  the  cheery,  conventional  greeting  after 
him  in  a  voice  that  he  did  not  seem  to 
recognize  as  his  own. 

The  time  the  train  could  remain  at 
this  place  was  nearly  up,  and  he  glanced 
at  his  clock  to  see  if  even  then  he  might 
not  set  the  engine  in  motion.  The  hands 
stood  exactly  at  twelve,  folded  together 
in  a  manner  that  suggested  palms  close 
ly  pressed  in  prayer  ;  and  now,  as  he  sat 
waiting  for  the  moment  when  he  might 
be  off,  the  chimes  rang  out  from  a  church 
near  at  hand.  In  the  clear  night  air  they 
sounded  merrily,  and  it  seemed  to  him 
that  he  had  never  heard  sounds  so  sweet, 
so  holy.  He  knew  what  it  meant,  they 
were  ringing  for  the  midnight  service  of 
Christmas.  Had  he  not  gone  once,  with 
her,  and  as  the  memory  came  back  to 
him — it  seemed  almost  brought  to  him  by 
the  wind-borne  cadences  of  the  bells — he 
bowed  his  head  on  his  hand  that  rested 


AS   THE   SPARKS    FLY   UPWARD"      59 


on  the  cold,  hard  handle  of  the  steel 
beam,  and  a  sob  broke  from  him  and  left 
him  trembling  and  afraid.  He  thought 
of  the  momentous  event  in  remembrance 
of  which  the  bells  were  ringing — the  birth 
of  the  Child  that  was  born  into  the  world 
to  bring  the  message  of  hope  and  of  sal 
vation  ;  to  teach  that  lesson  of  gentleness 
and  peace  that  the  world  had  never  known 
before — that  it  has  only  so  imperfectly 
learned.  "  Peace  on  earth  and  good-will 
toward  men."  He  turned  again  and 
glanced  at  the  upward  staring  face  in  the 
corner.  The  contrast  between  word  and 
fact  was  so  terrible,  so  complete,  that 
its  realization  overcame  him,  and  in  his 
sudden  agony  he  again  sobbed  aloud. 

On  flew  the  train.  The  flat,  open  coun 
try  was  crossed,  and  its  way  now  lay 
among  high  hills  that  soon  would  become 
mountains.  Irby  felt  that  there  was  some 
thing  threatening  in  their  ragged  outline 


60  STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 


and  wished  himself  back  again  in  the  lev 
el  land.  Then  he  tried  to  dismiss  such 
senseless,  such  insane  ideas  from  his  mind 
and  sought  to  reason,  and  to  resolve,  but 
found  he  could  do  neither.  Was  he  be 
coming  mad,  or  had  he  been  mad  all  the 
time  ?  It  was  a  new  thought,  and  he  pon 
dered  over  it  diligently. 

He  seemed  to  hear  a  noise  as  if  some 
one  were  moving,  and  glanced  around. 
Spurlock  stirred  uneasily,  raised  himself 
slowly  on  his  elbow,  then,  in  an  instant, 
was  on  his  feet.  It  was  evident  that  com 
plete  intelligence  had  returned  with  re 
newed  physical  strength,  his  still  vigorous 
youth  making  sudden  recovery  possible. 
He  threw  himself  instantly  into  a  position 
of  defence,  as  if  his  last  conscious  thought 
was  still  in  his  mind,  or  was  the  first  to  re 
turn  to  it. 

"  Dan,"  he  cried,  "  what's  the  matter? 
Have  you  gone  mad  ?  " 

But  Irby  did  not  answer.  The  knowledge 


"AS   THE   SPARKS   FLY    UPWARD"      6l 


that,  after  all,  he  had  not  killed  his  com 
panion  filled  him  for  an  instant  with  strange 
relief;  then  the  old  fierce  hate  returned, 
and  he  looked  at  the  other  threateningly. 

"What  is  it,  Dan  ?"  said  Spurlock, 
entreatingly  ;  "  can't  you  tell  me?  " 

Still  Irby  did  not  speak. 

"Can't  you  say  something?"  contin 
ued  Spurlock. 

"  No,"  answered  Irby.  "  I'm  not  crazy, 
whatever  you  may  think  — although  per 
haps  I  ought  to  be." 

"  Then  what  is  it  ?  " 

"  You  were  telling  me  a  story." 

"  Yes." 

"  Do  you  remember  there  was — a — wo 
man  in  it?  " 

"Yes." 

"  She,"  said  Irby,  calmly  enough,  "  was 
my  wife." 

"  It  isn't  true,  Dan,  it  can't  be  true," 
almost  shrieked  Spurlock,  raising  his 
voice  high  above  the  roar  of  the  train. 


62  STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 

"  It  was  true,"  answered  Irby. 

"But,  Dan,"  implored  Spurlock,  "I 
never  knew,  I  never  could  have  suspected. 
She  had  another  name." 

"  Shaw  was  my  name  then,  is  my  real 
name  now." 

"  But  I  swear  to  you,  swear  to  you  as 
I  hope  for  salvation  on  the  day  of  judg 
ment,  that  there  was  nothing." 

"I  know,"  said  Irby,  slowly,  "and  I 
believe  you.  But  you  said  that  she  told 
you  that  she  loved  you.  You  confessed 
that  yourself,  and  isn't  that  enough  ?  " 

"And  what  are  you  going  to  do  ?  " 

"What  I  started  to  do,"  answered  Ir 
by. 

"  No,  Dan,"  cried  Spurlock,  "  don't  say 
that,  don't  do  that.  If  I've  done  you  a 
wrong,  I  didn't  mean  it,  and " 

"  I  don't  pretend,"  answered  Irby,  sul 
lenly,  "  that  I  can  see  the  thing  clear.  I 
only  know  what  I  have  felt,  and  what  I 
feel.  There  may  not  be  any  justice  in  it, 


"AS   THE   SPARKS   FLY   UPWARD"      63 

but  justice  is  for  them  who  can  think,  and 
I  can't.  I  only  know  that  you're  the  man 
that  came  between  us  ;  that  I  tried  to  find 
then,  and  that  I've  found  at  last." 

"And  you're  going  to  kill  me  ?  "  asked 
Spurlock,  now  with  entire  calmness  ;  "  is 
that  what  you  mean  ?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  Irby. 

"  Then  I  tell  you  what  it  is,"  continued 
Spurlock,  with  perfect  coolness,  though 
with  a  certain  quickness  of  utterance,  "  I 
haven't  done  anything  to  you,  knowingly, 
and  if  you  try  that  again  I'm  going  to  de 
fend  myself.  You  know  I'm  not  afraid, 
and  that  I'll  make  a  good  fight." 

"All  the  better,"  said  Irby,  grimly; 
"  I'll  feel  it  the  less  after  it's  over." 

"  But  look  here,"  Spurlock  went  on, 
"do  you  propose  that  we  settle  this  here, 
and  now?  " 

"  Yes,"  answered  Irby. 

"Then  I'd  like  to  say  something,"  said 
Spurlock,  seating  himself,  but  watching 


64  STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 


his  companion  carefully.  "We're  both 
strong  men.  I'm  as  likely  to  do  you  an 
injury  as  you  me.  We  might  both  meet 
with  an  accident,  and  then  what  would 
become  of  the  train  ?  " 

Irby  did  not  answer.  After  what  had 
passed,  this  calm  parleying  with  life  and 
death  did  not  strike  him  as  in  the  least 
unnatural.  Whether  or  not  he  should 
kill  Spurlock  then  and  there,  or  wait  un 
til  later,  seemed  to  him  a  matter  that 
might  be  talked  over  quite  calmly  and 
collectedly. 

"It's  our  duty,"  said  Spurlock,  "to 
look  out  for  the  train,  whatever  we  may 
feel  ourselves." 

Irby  thought  of  the  scores  of  sleeping 
passengers,  and  hesitated.  What  Spur 
lock  said  was  true.  A  struggle  between 
them  in  such  confined  quarters  would  in 
deed  be  something  determined  and  dan 
gerous  ;  and  though  he  had  no  doubt  as 
to  its  outcome,  still  Spurlock  could  very 


AS   THE    SPARKS    FLY    UPWARD  "      65 


easily  clo  him  an  injury  that  would  inca 
pacitate  him. 

"  I  think  you're  right,"  he  answered, 
briefly,  and  then  he  again  sat  down,  for 
he  had  risen  when  he  had  first  spoken  ; 
41  there's  more  coal  needed,  put  it  on." 

Spurlock  threw  open  the  furnace-door 


66  STORIES   OF   THE    RAILWAY 

again  allowing  the  ruddy  glow  to  play 
over  the  place,  cast  half-a-dozen  shovel 
fuls  of  coal  on  the  embers,  fanned  by  the 
draft  to  almost  a  white  heat,  then  closed 
the  heavy  iron  shutter,  and  took  his  place 
opposite  Irby. 

Mile  on  mile  they  rode  in  silence, 
hardly  looking  at  each  other.  The  lights 
were  all  out  now  in  the  houses  along  the 
road,  the  landscape  unbroken  by  a  gleam 
anywhere.  It  was  like  travelling  through 
some  lately  deserted  land. 

"  Dan,"  said  Spurlock  at  length,  "  I 
don't  speak  because  I  want  you  to  let  up 
on  me,  but  you  know  you're  the  last  man 
in  the  world  I'd  harm." 

"  I  know  it,"  answered  Irby,  shortly. 

Then  again  there  was  silence,  lasting 
for  minutes  and  miles. 

"  If  there's  no  way  out  of  this,"  said 
Spurlock,  once  more  speaking,  "  I'd 
like,  Dan,  to  understand  it  a  little  better. 
I  want  to  know  what  I've  done  to  you." 


"AS   THE   SPARKS   FLY   UPWARD"      67 

Should  he  answer  him,  Irby  thought. 
He  knew  that  he  could  not  give  expres 
sion  to  the  least  part  of  what  he  had 
known  and  suffered,  but  the  instinct  that 
makes  even  the  bravest  sometimes  cry 
out  when  they  are  hurt  forbade  si 
lence. 

"  It  was  you  that  spoiled  the  only  hap 
piness  that  I  ever  had,"  he  said,  relent 
lessly  ;  "it  was  you  that  destroyed  my 
confidence  in  her." 

It  appeared  incomprehensible  that  he 
could  sit  there  so  calmly  discussing  his 
own  misery  with  the  man  who  had  been 
the  cause  of  it,  tossing  reasons  back  and 
across,  as  if  it  were  the  most  ordinary  sub 
ject.  But  so  much  had  happened  to  him 
that  he  had  not  thought  possible  that  the 
position  only  caused  him  momentary  sur 
prise. 

"  Yes,"  said  Spurlock.  "  But  I  didn't 
know — I  couldn't  look  ahead." 

"  But  you  must  have  understood  that 


68  STORIES    OF   THE    RAILWAY 

harm  was  bound  to  come  somewhere— to 
someone." 

"A  man  doesn't  stop  to  think,"  an 
swered  Spurlock,  "  at  such  a  time." 

"Someone  was  bound  to  suffer,"  said 
Irby. 

"Well,"  exclaimed  Spurlock,  bitterly, 
4<  I  think  we've  all  done  that — all." 

"  I  thought  it  was  bad  enough  when  I 
lost  the  child,"  continued  Irby,  disregard 
ing  the  other's  speech,  "but  to  lose  her! 
A  man  don't  marry  a  woman  unless  he 
has  trust  in  her,  and  to  such  as  I,  who 
have  never  had  a  chance  to  believe  much 
of  anything,  it's  about  the  only  faith  that's 
given  to  them.  When  you  take  away 
such  belief  3^ou're  robbing  him  of  every 
thing  in  this  world  and  the  next,  for  some 
woman's  all  the  religion  many  a  man's 
got.  She  can  make  him  believe  that 
something's  right,  and  that  right's  some 
thing,  and  when  you  find  out  that  she  has 
been  deceiving  you,  there  don't  seem  to 


"AS   THE   SPARKS   FLY   UPWARD"      69 


be  anything  anywhere.  She's  not  only 
been  a  worse  woman,  but,  Spurlock,  I've 
been  a  worse  man  since  then." 

His  first  hesitancy  was  past  now,  and  he 
was  talking  unconstrainedly,  almost  argu- 
mentatively. 

"I  suppose,  Dan,"  Spurlock  hastened 
to  speak,  "  its  only  natural  that  you 
should  feel  the  way  you  do  ;  I  suppose 
I'd  do  the  same  in  your  place  ;  but  let's 
try  and  be  reasonable.  I  grant  that  you've 
got  grounds  of  complaint  against  me,  and 
I'm  willing  to  give  you  the  satisfaction 
you  want.  That's  only  square.  But, 
Dan,  we've  been  friends  so  long,  mates 
on  the  engine  for  some  considerable  time 
now,  and  it  isn't  as  if  I'd  been  a  stranger, 
and  you'd  learned  this  thing." 

"  No,"  assented  Irby. 

"  If  I  should  give  you  revenge,  I  owe 
you  gratitude,  and  whatever  comes  I'm 
not  going  to  forget  that." 

Another   city  was    near   as    they   both 


70  STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 

well  knew,  a  city  where  a  longer  stay 
would  be  made  than  at  any  place  since 
they  had  started  on  the  long  ride. 

"  In  ten  minutes  we'll  be  in  the  de 
pot,"  said  Spurlock,  "  what's  to  happen 
then  ?  " 

11  Nothing,"  answered  Irby,  after  a 
moment's  consideration. 

"  We'll  take  the  train  through  ?  " 

"Yes,  we'll  take  the  train  through," 
answered  Irby. 

The  track,  after  passing  the  station,  ran 
directly  over  a  great  bridge  that  spanned 
a  broad  river,  and  the  train,  with  care 
fully  diminished  speed,  almost  crawled 
along,  high  over  the  rushing  stream  that 
beat  with  such  strong  current  against  the 
massive  piers.  It  was  still  perfectly  dark, 
and  the  two  men  felt,  rather  than  saw, 
the  black  waters  rolling  beneath  them. 
Slowly,  it  would  seem  for  the  first  time 
almost  timidly,  the  engine  rolled  on,  but 


"AS   THE   SPARKS   FLY   UPWARD"      71 


soon  the  measured  clang — the  almost 
rhythmic  reverberation  of  the.  iron  gird 
ers,  as  the  wheels  ground  over  them — 
ceased  suddenly  ;  was  succeeded  by  a 
more  confused  and  unbroken  din,  and 
wheeling  around  a  bend  in  the  shore, 
the  locomotive  took  up  a  swifter  pace, 
and  soon  the  lights  glittering  along  the 
wharves,  and  the  gas-lamps  shining  in 
rows  up  and  down  the  steep  streets,  were 
lost  from  sight. 

It  was  a  straight  "  run  in  "  now  for  the 
metropolis,  unbroken  by  another  halt. 

For  a  time  the  landscape  was  obscured 
by  the  flying  flakes,  for  the  train  had  run 
into  a  snow-squall  and  the  air  was  full  of 
whirling,  downy  particles.  Finally  the 
storm  passed,  or  the  train  passed  it, 
and  as  the  engine  tore  on,  the  two  men 
saw  that  the  ground  beside  the  track, 
lit  by  the  dancing  light  of  the  cab  win 
dows,  was  unbrokenly  white.  The  train 
frequently  raced  by  small  way  stations, 


72  STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 

for  the  country  along  the  river  was  more 
thickly  settled  than  any  through  which 
it  had  passed  ;  but  they  were  all  dark,  or 
with  only  a  signal-light  at  some  switch, 
and  so  the  time  passed — the  train  grind 
ing  swiftly  on.  At  length,  at  one  place 
larger  than  the  rest,  there  shot  up  into 
the  darkness  strange,  lambent  flames  that 
caught  and  held,  though  it  was  no  strange 
sight  to  them,  the  gaze  of  both  the  men. 
Nearer,  it  was  easy  to  see  that  they  rose 
from  the  great  chimneys  of  an  iron  mill — 
that  like  huge  stationary  torches  lit  up 
all  around.  Of  vivid  green  when  they 
sprang  from  the  chimney's  mouths  they 
twisted  away  in  strange  orange  convolu 
tions —  fantastic  and  fascinating.  Now 
the  windows  of  the  wide-spreading  build 
ings,  row  after  row,  came  into  view  ;  and 
now,  through  an  opening,  could  be  seen 
the  glowing  interior,  with  glimpses  of 
dark,  diabolic  forms,  and  of  brilliant 
masses  of  heated  metal  that  either  flowed 


"AS    THE    SPARKS    FLY    UPWARD"      73 


in  slow,  fiery  stream,  or  cast  off,  beneath 
the  blows  of  ponderous  hammers,  bewil 
dering  showers  of  sparks.  But,  like  all 
else,  this  was  speedily  left  behind. 

"  Dan,"  said  Spurlock,  finally,  "  there's 
one  thing  I  wish  you'd  do." 

"  What  ?  "  asked  Irby. 

"  Shake  hands  with  me  for  the  time 
that's  past — when  we  didn't  know." 

Irby  hesitated  a  moment,  then  held  out 
his  hand  to  his  companion  ;  Spurlock 
seized  and  shook  it  silently. 

"  We'll  be  in  the  city  in  a  little  more 
than  an  hour,  now,"  continued  Spurlock, 
''  and  I  thought  we'd  better  settle  up 
everything  and  then  start  fresh." 

Irby  nodded. 

"  They  gave  me  a  letter  for  you  just  as 
we  were  leaving,  that  had  been  waiting 
for  you  at  the  office,"  Spurlock  went  on  : 
"  but  the  hurry  of  starting  drove  it  out  of 
my  head,  and,"  Spurlock  smiled  grimly, 
"you  knocked  it  out." 


74  STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 


He  drew  a  letter  from  his  coat  and 
handed  it  to  Irby. 

The  day  had  just  broken  and  the  first 
tinges  of  anything  like  color  appeared  in 
the  sky.  It  was  still  dark,  but  the  shape 
of  the  great,  swelling  headlands  across 
the  broad  river  that  flowed  along  un 
frozen,  and  with  swollen  flood,  could  now 
with  difficulty  be  distinguished.  It  was 
light  enough,  however,  for  Irby  to  read 
the  direction  on  the  envelope,  and  as  he 
did  so  his  face,  already  so  pale,  became  a 
duller  white  and  he  slightly  trembled. 

Then  he  hastily  tore  open  the  letter, 
and  read  in  the  dim  but  strengthening 
light : 

DAN,  DEAR:  I  do  not  know  why  I 
write  to  you  at  this  time  unless  it  is  for 
the  very  reason  that  it  is  this  time.  The 
day  that  is  so  near  is  so  closely  con 
nected  with  so  much  that  was  most  im 
portant  to  me,  and  must  be  so  to  you— 
that  is  if  you  ever  think  of  me  and  the 


"AS   THE    SPARKS   FLY   UPWARD"      75 

past  at  all— that  I  have  ventured  to  do  it. 
I  know   that  you   have  done  all  in  your 
power  to  make  it  impossible  for  me  to 
reach   you— all   uselessly  heretofore— for 
even  if  I  had  been  able  to  approach  you  I 
would  not   have   done   so.      I   was   very 
proud,  and  you  hurt  me  very  much.     But 
I  am  changed  now  ;  suffering  has  made 
the   girl,  intolerant   in   her   ignorance,  a 
woman  who  can  understand  and  who  can 
condone.     I  have  changed,  and  the  con 
sciousness   of   that    fact    has    made    me 
think   that  you  may   have   changed  too, 
and   that   perhaps   all  may  be   different. 
We  have  made  a  mistake,  Dan,  I  as  well 
as  you,  and  now  I  know  it.     I  should  not 
have  been  so  resentful  of  your  suspicions  ; 
you  should  not  have  been  so  angered  by 
my  resentment.     You  were  older  than  I, 
and  you  should  have  been  more  patient. 
But  I  am  not  writing  these  lines  to  show 
you  wherein  you  have  failed,  but  rather 
to   acknowledge   my   own    errors.      For, 
Dan,  I  did  you  a  wrong,  though  not  in 
the  way  you  accused  me  of  doing  it.     I 
did  deceive  you,  but  it  was  not  in  the  way 
you  thought.     I   deceived  you  once,  but 


76  STORIES    OF   THE   RAILWAY 


even  then  I  did  not  tell  you  a  lie.     I  only 
let  you  go  on  thinking  something  that  was 
not   true.     Ethel   died    last  night,   here, 
with  me  by  her  bedside.     It  was  not  true 
the  news  that  came  to  us  from  that  East 
ern  hospital ;  she  was  very  ill,  but  she  re 
covered,  and  one  day,  more  than  a  year 
and  a  half  ago,  she  came  to  me,  when  we 
were  living  in  Arapago,  and  begged  me 
to  be  kind  to  her.     I  remembered  what 
you  had  told  me,  and— recollected  that  you 
are  a  stern  man— sometimes  almost  hard 
—that  you  have  been  hard  even  with  me, 
though   you  never  meant   it— and  I  was 
afraid  if  I  let  you  know  that  you  would 
not    allow    me    to    see    her.     And   poor 
Ethel,    if    anyone    needed    help    in    this 
world,  such  help  as  sympathy  alone  can 
give,  it  was  she.     She  was  never  really 
bad,  only  weak— fearfully,  fatally  weak— 
and   though   God   knows   that   I   needed 
strength— that  was  one  of  the  reasons  I 
loved  you,  Dan,  you  made  me  feel  so  se 
cure  of  myself— I  could  aid  her.     Under 
the  name  of  Agnes  Holcombe,  the  name 
she  had  taken  when  she  left  her  home, 
she  lived  in  the  city,  supporting  herself 


AS   THE    SPARKS    FLY    UPWARD         77 


with  some  little  assistance  from  me.  She 
could  only  come  to  the  house— I  could 
only  see  her,  when  you  were  away.  Per 
haps  you  will  understand  now  what  it  was 
I  was  keeping  from  you.  I  felt  that  I 
must  see  her,  if  she  was  to  be  saved.  I 
was  the  only  influence  for  good  that  there 
was  near  her — I  alone  had  power  to  con 
trol  her,  and  I  did  see  her  and  kept  the 
knowledge  of  it  from  you.  There  was  a 
young  man  who  was  in  love  with  her — I 
did  not  know  that  for  some  time,  she  did 
not  tell  me,  and  though  I  did  what  I 
could,  she  insisted  upon  seeing  him,  slip 
ping  out  to  meet  him,  even  in  the  garden 
beside  the  house.  Poor  girl,  it  seemed  as 
if  she  craved  love  more  than  most  of  us, 
and  that  it  was  her  very  need  for  affection 
that  always  brought  her  trouble. 

I  did  not  think  that  1  would  ever  seek 
to  justify  myself.  At  the  time  of  our 
trouble  I  felt  too  deeply  your  unworthy 
doubts  ;  the  very  fact  that  I  loved  you  so 
much  made  the  wound  deeper,  and  I  im 
agined  then  that  I  never  would  forget ; 
but  time  does  so  much,  and  as  the  day 
has  once  more  come  around  that  has 


78  STORIES   OF   THE   RAILWAY 


meant  so  much  to  us,  is  so  nearly  here,  I 
have  seen  things  differently — and  I  have 
wanted  you  to  hear  the  truth.  I  do  not 
know  what  effect  it  will  have  upon  you, 
but  at  least  there  will  no  longer  be  any 
misunderstanding,  and  whatever  the  fut 
ure  may  be  for  us,  it  will  not  be  the  re 
sult  of  a  mistake. 

I  am — no  I  have  some  pride  left  and  I 
will  not  tell  you  where  I  am — but  if  you 
really  wish  to  see  me  you  can  find  me. 
The  postmark  on  the  letter  will  give  you 
a  clue.  But,  Dan,  if  you  are  coming,  do 
not  wait  long.  I  cannot  bear  suspense. 
If  you  are  coming,  come  at  once,  and 
make  this  for  me,  what  I  could  not  expect 
and  perhaps  do  not  deserve,  indeed  a 
merry  Christmas  and  a  happy  New  Year. 

MABEL. 

As  Irby  finished  reading  the  letter  the 
sun  started  up  from  behind  a  not  distant 
hill  and  flung  its  light  full  into  the  engine 
windows  ;  then  its  brilliant  rays  spread 
across  the  small  sparkling  waves  of  the 
grandly  rolling  river,  and  fell  on  the  op- 


AS   THE    SPARKS   FLY   UPWARD  "      79 


posite  shore — turning  the  snow-covered 
hills  a  warm  and  delicate  pink.  The 
smoke,  rising  from  the  many  chimneys  of 
a  village  through  which  the  train  dashed, 
mounted  slowly  and  almost  in  unswerving 
lines  in  the  still  air,  while  the  unshuttered 
windows  cast  back  the  new  radiance  of 
the  morning,  flash  on  flash.  It  seemed  a 
new  world,  and  to  Irby  it  was  one. 
Silently  he  handed  the  paper  he  had  just 
read  to  Spurlock,  who  took  it  wonder- 
ingly,  and  again  his  head  sank  upon  his 
left  hand,  which  hardly  for  more  than  an 
instant  had  left  the  bar  that  controlled  the 
onrushing  engine. 


HOW  I  SENT  MY  AUNT  TO 
BALTIMORE 

A    TRUE    STORY 
Bv  CHARLES   STEWART  DAVISON 


VERY  well-regulated 
New  Englander  is,  or 
should  be,  possessed  of 
at  least  three  maiden 
aunts,  whose  ages,  by  the 
way,  never  by  any  possibility 
aggregate  less  than  one  hundred 
and  ninety-five  to  two  hundred  and  forty 
years.  While  not  desiring  to  arrogate  to 
myself  any  superiority  in  this  respect  over 
the  average  descendant  of  the  pilgrim 
fathers,  I  can,  or  rather  could,  at  the  time 
when  the  events  hereinafter  detailed  oc 
curred,  have  laid  claim  to  this  distinctive 
badge  of  Puritan  descent.  In  the  course 
of  events,  which  may  possibly  be  regarded 
as  natural,  the  oldest  of  my  three  aunts, 
then  a  frail  and  delicate  old  lady  of  about 
seventy-four,  became  (some  six  years 


84  STORIES    OF    THE   RAILWAY 


hence)  overwhelmed  with  a  desire  to 
travel.  Her  first  pilgrimage  extended  as 
far  from  the  "  centre  of  the  universe  "  as 
Staten  Island.  After  a  brief  stay  at  our 
house  she  determined  that  the  next  step 
in  her  peregrinations  should  be  to  the 
house  of  a  married  sister  residing  in  Bal 
timore.  It  being  impossible,  on  account 
of  other  duties,  that  any  member  of  the 
family  should  accompany  her,  I  was  dele 
gated,  as  being  the  most  experienced 
traveller  and  the  possessor  of  the  greatest 


HOW   I    SENT    MY   AUNT   TO    B .       85 

executive  ability  in  the  family,  to  see  her 
safely  placed  in  some  seat  in  some  draw 
ing-room  car,  which  should  deposit  her, 
if  not  in  the  arms  of  her  relatives  in  Mary 
land,  at  least  in  the  Baltimore  railroad 
depot. 

The  enterprising  Canadian,  who  now 
rules  the  destinies  of  Staten  Island,  hav 
ing  at  that  time  not  yet  burst  upon  an  as 
tounded  community  in  the  full  and  efful 
gent  glory  of  Rapid  Transit,  islanders 
were  accustomed  to  visit  the  city  of  New 
York  at  comparatively  irregular,  but  offi 
cially  stated,  periods.  On  consideration, 
it  seemed  unnecessary  to  leave  Staten  Is 
land  by  a  boat  which  would  afford  oppor 
tunity  for,  at  the  very  least,  fifty-five  min 
utes'  reflection  in  the  railroad  depot  be 
fore  train  time,  and  an  alluring  time-table 
promised  a  much  closer  connection  by 
the  succeeding  boat.  We  therefore  de 
termined  to  take  it.  It  is  needless  to  say 
that  that  boat  was  five  minutes  late  in 


86  STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 

starting  ;  unnecessary  to  add  that  at  New 
York  a  passing  canal-boat  delayed  for  a 
few  minutes  our  entrance  into  the  ferry 
slip  ;  and  it  surely  was  nothing  more  than 
might  be  expected,  that  an  elevated  train 
at  South  Ferry  should  leave  one  end  of 
the  platform  as  we  reached  the  other.     As 
a  result,  however,  of  these  wholly  natural 
forces,  we  entered  the  ferry-house  on  the 
New  York  side  of  the  North   River  with 
three  minutes  to   spare    before   the  last 
boat  which   would   catch   a  fast  through 
train,    whose  intermediate  stops  were  so 
few  and  brief  as  not  to  deserve  mention, 
would  leave.     With  the  tendency  which 
has    been    well    called    "  the    gorgeous 
orientalism   of  the   Western   mind,"  this 
train    bore   a  special    name   which    had 
become    familiar    as    its    destination     to 
many  ears,  including  my  own.     From  this 
fact  many  troubles   thereafter   arose,   as 
will  be  seen.     Fortunately,  one  thing  was 
in  our  favor,   my  aunt's  trunk  had  pre- 


HOW  I   SENT    MY   AUNT    TO    B .      87 


ceded  us  and,  with  a  calm  confidence  in 
the  baggage  system  in  vogue  in  this 
country,  it  reposed  on  one  end  awaiting 
its  inevitable  tagging,  in  front  of  the  bag 
gage  counter,  as  I  had  time  to  notice 
while  dashing  into  the  ferry-house.  Cau 
tioning  my  aunt  under  no  circumstances 
to  move  until  I  returned,  I  rushed  to  the 
ticket-office,  tossed  the  man  a  ten-dollar 
bill,  and  in  my  haste,  with  the  train  on  my 
mind,  mentioned  mechanically  the  name 
by  which  it  was  known,  and  which  in 
cluded  the  name  of  an  intermediate  city. 
It  will  be  readily  seen  how  the  name  of 
the  train  she  was  to  travel  by  momentar 
ily  obliterated  all  consciousness  as  to  the 
objective  point  of  the  journey. 

I  had  just  time  enough  to  wonder,  in  a 
semi-stupefied  way,  as  to  the  amount  of 
change  that  was  returned  out  of  the  ten- 
dollar  bill,  while  hurrying  to  the  baggage- 
room.  There  I  silently  exhibited  the 
ticket,  was  handed  a  check,  and  rushed 


88  STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 


back  to  my  aunt.  I  hurried  her  through 
the  gates,  and  we  had  a  few  moments' 
breathing  time  crossing  the  river.  Sim 
ultaneously,  on  our  arrival  at  the  New 
Jersey  side  of  the  North  River,  the  gates 
leading  to  the  train  were  opened,  and  the 
stentorian  guardian  of  the  portal  recited, 
in  unintelligible  tones,  the  names  of  most 
of  the  railroad  stations  of  the  United 
States.  I  found  time,  however,  to  get  a 
seat-ticket  at  the  little  window  in  the  ex 
treme  right-hand  corner  of  the  waiting- 
room,  where,  for  the  purpose  of  making 
matters  as  inconvenient  as  possible,  as  it 
momentarily  seemed  to  me,  those  valua 
ble  pieces  of  pasteboard  were  dealt  out. 
Fortunately,  I  noticed  that  the  seat  as 
signed  on  the  little  slip  of  card  handed 
me,  was  No.  25,  in  car  No.  i.  But  here, 
again,  instead  of  asking  for  a  seat  to  any 
particular  place,  I  silently  exhibited  the 
railroad  ticket  which  I  had  purchased  on 
the  other  side  of  the  river.  We  hurried 


90  STORIES    OF   THE    RAILWAY 


through  the  gates,  found  car  No.   i,  and 
placing  my  aunt  in  the  first  vacant  chair, 
I  proceeded  to  look  for  seat  No,  25.     As 
I  turned  from  her  to  do  so,  I  noticed  that 
the  sides  of  the  station  were  gently  slip 
ping   past    the    car.     Asking  the  nearest 
person  if  it  was  possible  that  the  train  had 
already  started,  I  received  so  unqualified 
an  affirmative  response   that  no  possible 
doubt  could  remain.     As  the  train's  first 
stop  was  a  full  hour  away,  and  as  I  had 
several  matters  needing  attention  in  New 
York,  the  conclusion  was  forced  upon  me 
that  extreme  promptness  would  alone  pro 
cure  their  being  duly  attended  to.     Select 
ing  the  nearest  traveller,  I  thrust  into  his 
hands  my  aunt's  railroad  tickets,  her  little 
wicker  basket  of  lunch,  and  a  novel  pur 
chased  at  the  elevated  station  ;  asked  him 
in  one  breathless  phrase  to  find  her  seat 
for  her,  fled  to  the  door,  andjumped  from 
the  steps  as  the  train  cleared  the  end  of 
the  long  station.     After  performing  vari- 


HOW   I    SENT   MY  AUNT   TO    B .      91 


ous  agile  contortions  in  the  air,  with  a 
view  to  an  ultimate  recovery  of  equilib 
rium,  I  rested  from  my  labors  in  this  re 
spect  and  walked  slowly  back  along  the 
platform,  reflecting  upon  the  very  unsat 
isfactory  way  in  which  I  had  started  her 
on  her  journey,  and  naturally,  as  anyone 
in  contemplative  mood  would,  I  thrust  my 
hands  into  the  pockets  of  my  overcoat. 
With  gloomy  forebodings  I  extracted  from 
one  pocket  a  strange  object  It  was  my 
aunt's  purse,  which  I  had  taken  from  her 
that  I  might,  for  greater  security,  put  her 
trunk-check  in  one  of  its  compartments. 
This  raised  a  new  doubt,  if  not  a  new 
complication.  It  was  clearly  necessary 
to  make  certain  beyond  peradventure 
that  she  should  be  met  on  her  arrival  at 
her  destination,  since  she  had  no  money 
with  her.  With  this  object  in  view,  I  made 
my  way  to  the  telegraph  window  in  the 

station,  secured  a  blank,  and  wrote  : , 

Esq.,    No.  —  Lexington    Street,    Balti- 


92  STORIES   OF   THE   RAILWAY 

more  ?  The  pen  dropped  from  my  hand. 
Photographed  on  the  mental  wall  before 
my  inward  eye,  aroused  by  this  first  recog 
nition  of  Baltimore  as  a  distinct  entity, 
appeared  the  designation  of  the  train,  in 
cluding  the  name  of  the  intermediate 
city.  In  a  flash  the  superabundance  of 
change  which  I  had  received  at  the  ticket 
office  became  understandable.  There 
could  be  no  doubt.  I  had  started  an 
elderly  lady,  totally  inexperienced  in  the 
ways  of  the  world  at  large,  and  of  the 
travelling  world  in  particular,  without 
money  and  without  power  of  reclaiming 
her  trunk,  with  a  ticket  and  a  seat  only,  to 
a  point  a  couple  of  hundred  miles  short 
of  her  destination. 

Desperate  cases  need  prompt  action. 

I  had  in  mind  but  one  idea,  that  if  I 
could  hire  a  special  locomotive  I  might 
overtake  the  train  at  its  first  stopping- 
place. 

Looking  firmly  at  the  telegraph  oper- 


HOW    I    SENT    MY   AUNT   TO    B .      93 

ator,  I  said,  "  Has  this  road  got  any 
superintendent  ?  " 

"Yes." 

"  Where  is  he  ?  " 

"  Outside,  to  the  right,  upstairs."  And 
outside,  to  the  right,  upstairs,  I  pro 
ceeded. 

Opening  a  door,  I  came  on  several 
clerks  seated  at  desks,  writing. 

"  Where  is  the  superintendent  ?  " 

"  Through  there,"  said  one,  pointing. 
Through  there  I  went. 

I  found  a  medium-sized  room  ;  a  desk 
in  the  centre,  a  youngish  man  of  dark 
complexion  and  smooth-shaven  face — a 
man  not  over  thirty-five,  of  pleasing  im 
pression  and  unruffled  front,  seated  at  it. 

"  Are  you  the  superintendent  ?  " 

"  Yes." 

I  sat  down. 

Looking  at  him  with  as  much  of  earnest 
entreaty,  desperate  resolve,  alarm,  deter 
mination,  and  a  few  other  qualities  as  I 


94  STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 


could  summon  to  my  instant  aid,  I  said, 
without  a  breath  or  pause,  u  I  have  just 
started  an  old  lady  inexperienced  in  trav 
elling  who  wants  to  go  to  Baltimore  with 
tickets  only  half-way  and  without  any 
money  ;  she  is  in  car  No.  i,  seat  25." 


Never  yet  have  I  seen  a  man  rise  so  in 
stantly,  so  calmly,  and  so  unconsciously 
to  the  exact  level  of  an  occasion.  He 
smiled  and  touched  a  bell  and  said, 
"  That  is  all  right.  As  long  as  she  does 
not  get  scared  and  get  off  the  train,  we've 
got  her.  I  will  have  them  flag  the  train, 


HOW   I    SENT    MY   AUNT    TO    B .      95 


and  tell  the  conductor  to  look  out  for  her." 
While  he  talked  he  wrote.  Almost  in 
stantly  the  door  opened.  A  messenger 
appeared.  The  message  was  finished. 
It  read,  "  Conductor,  train  37.  Elderly 
lady,  car  No.  i,  seat  25.  Is  to  go  through 
to  Baltimore,  whether  she  has  tickets  or 
not.  Don't  let  her  leave  the  train." 
Handing  the  slip  to  the  messenger  he 
turned  to  me  and  repeated,  with  a  smile, 
''  As  long  as  we  have  got  her  on  the  train 
she  is  all  right.  Now,"  he  said,  continu 
ing,  "we  will  telegraph  to  the  agent  at 
the  station  at  which  her  tickets  expire,  to 
buy  her  a  ticket  on  to  Baltimore,  arid  to 
buy  the  same  parlor-car  seat  she  is  now 
in,  on  to  Baltimore,  and  to  take  the  tick 
ets  to  her  on  the  train."  In  two  minutes 
the  telegram  was  sent.  "  Now,"  he 
said,  "we  will  telegraph  the  conductor 
fully,  at  his  first  regular  stop,  what  the 
circumstances  are.  And,"  said  he,  turn 
ing  again  to  me,  "  You  say  she  has  no 


96  STORIES   OF   THE   RAILWAY 

money."  "  I  have  her  purse  here,"  I  re 
plied.  "Well,"  he  said,  "we  will  tell 
the  conductor  to  hand  her  ten  dollars  in 
change."  While  talking  his  pen  was 
busy.  In  a  moment  more  he  read  me  a 
concise  statement  of  the  facts  of  the  case, 
addressed  to  the  conductor  at  the  first 
way-station.  This  despatched,  he  sat 
back  in  his  chair  and  reflected  for  a  mo 
ment.  "  Now,"  he  said,  pushing  over  to 
me  a  pad  of  paper  and  a  pencil,  "she 
won't  know  what  all  this  means,  and  may 
get  alarmed.  Had  you  not  better  send 
her  a  long  conversational  telegram,  to  be 
delivered  on  the  train  ?  " 

I  wrote  some  twenty  lines  explaining 
the  situation,  telling  her  that  all  she  need 
do  was  to  remain  in  her  seat  until  the  train 
reached  Baltimore,  that  tickets  and  money 
would  be  supplied  to  her,  that  under  no 
circumstances  was  she  to  leave  the  train, 
and  that  I  was  overwhelmed  with  sorrow 
at  having  so  badly  arranged  her  journey. 


HOW   I   SENT   MY  AUNT   TO    B .      97 

While  writing  this  telegram  another  door 
opened,  and  a  head  and  hand  appeared 
through  it.  The  hand  waved  a  little  slip 
of  yellow  paper,  and  the  head  said, 
"Conductor,  train  37,  says,  Elderly  lady 
all  right."  An  enormous  weight  rolled 
from  my  mind.  The  man  who,  so  far  as 
my  purview  extended,  controlled  the  des 
tinies  of  creation,  then  said,  "  Now,  how 
are  you  going  to  get  her  purse  and  trunk 
check,  which  I  see  you  have,  to  her?  " 
"  I  thought  of  sending  them  by  mail." 
"  Well,  suppose  you  write  her  a  note 
and  do  it  up  with  the  purse  in  a  package, 
and  I  will  send  it  down  the  line  so  she  can 
get  it  to-night.  We  have  a  wild-cat  en 
gine  going  over  the  line  in  about  half  an 
hour."  The  resources  of  the  road  seemed 
inexhaustible,  and  it  is  needless  to  say 
that  to  this  further  extent  I  availed  myself 
of  them.  But  before  the  package  was 
sealed,  another  idea  had  occurred  to  the 
superintendent,  who  indeed,  I  think, 


98  STORIES    OF   THE   RAILWAY 


rather  made  a  point  of  showing  me  what 
the  possibilities  of  their  system  of  manage 
ment  were.  "That  trunk  check,"  he  said, 
"  is  only  for  the  same  point  as  her  tickets. 
What  is  its  number?"  I  told  him. 
"  Now,"  said  he,  "  we  will  telegraph  the 
baggage-master  there,  that  that  piece  of 
luggage,  though  checked  only  to  his 
point,  is  not  to  be  put  off,  but  is  to  go  on 
to  Baltimore,  where  it  will  be  redeemed 
on  the  original  check." 

Again  his  pen  sought  the  invaluable 
pad,  and  the  final  message  was  de 
spatched. 

With  a  general  feeling  that  I  had  in 
curred  anywhere  from  one  to  five  thou 
sand  dollars  of  expense,  I  inquired  in  re 
lation  to  this  delicate  question.  "  Well,'' 
said  he,  "  now  let  me  see.  The  difference 
in  fares  is  (referring  to  a  schedule)  $3,  the 
parlor-car  seat  is  $i.  We  gave  her  $10 
in  the  train  (observe  the  unconscious  cer 
tainty  with  which  he  spoke  of  that  which 


HOW   I   SENT   MY   AUNT   TO   B .      99 


he  had  by  telegraph  ordered  done  being 
already  the  fact)  that  makes  in  all  $14." 
"But,"  I  said,  <lis  there  no  charge  for 
all  these  telegrams  and  the  trouble  that 
the  road  has  been  put  to  in  the  matter  ?  " 
"Oh,  no,"  he  said,  "all  these  are  mat 
ters  of  detail  ;  "  giving  one  the  general 
impression  that  "  the  road  "  stood  in  loco 
farcntis  to  those  who  travelled  by  it. 
With  thanks  which  were  sincere,  if  not  ef 
fusive,  I  was  about  leaving,  when  again 
the  head  and  yellow-slipped  hand  ap 
peared  through  the  door.  "  Ticket  agent 
number  nine-two-three  says,  All  right. 
Baggage-master  number  four-four-five 
says,  All  right,"  and  the  head  vanished. 
I  came  away  with  the  general  stunned 
feeling  which  we  all  experience  when  we 
run  up  against  an  approximately  perfect 
system,  working  without  hitch  or  delay. 
On  the  succeeding  evening  I  learned  by 
letter  from  my  aunt  that  it  had  not  been 
mere  appearance  of  efficiency.  As  she 


100         STORIES   OF   THE   RAILWAY 

expressed  it,  before  she  knew  anything 
was  wrong,  people  kept  bringing  her  tele 
grams,  and  handing  her  money,  and  say 
ing  that  everything  was  all  right.  The 
conductor  came  to  her  immediately  after 
the  train  was  flagged,  explained  to  her 
that  her  tickets  were  accidentally  for  the 
wrong  place  (of  which  she  had  not  become 
aware),  but  that  she  would  be  carried  on 
to  Baltimore,  and  that  under  no  circum 
stances  was  she  to  leave  the  car  or  the 
train.  Came  to  her  again  at  the  first  stop 
and  handed  her  ten  dollars.  A  ticket 
agent  came  to  her  thereafter  and  handed 
her  new  tickets  to  take  her  to  Baltimore. 
She  was  met  at  Baltimore  in  accordance 
with  a  telegram  which  I  forgot  to  mention 
was  also  despatched  by  my  friend,  the 
superintendent,  and  later  in  the  evening 
her  purse  and  trunk  check  were  delivered 
to  her  at  her  sister's  house. 

The  above  might  well  be  thought  to  be 
an  imaginary  sketch   of  what   might  be 


HOW    I    SENT   MY   AUNT    TO    B- 


101 


done  on  and  by  a  well-organized  road. 
It  is,  however,  something  more  than  that  ; 
it  is  an  exact  statement  of  facts  which 
actually  occurred. 


"RUN   TO  SEED' 

BY  THOMAS  NELSON  PAGE 


JIM'S  father  died  at  Gettysburg;  up 
against  the  Stone  Fence  :  went  to  Heav 
en  in  a  chariot  of  fire  on  that  fateful  day 
when  the  issue  between  the  two  parts  of 
the  country  was  decided  ;  when  the 
slaughter  on  the  Confederate  side  was 
such  that  after  the  battle  a  lieutenant  was 
in  charge  of  a  regiment,  and  a  major 
commanded  a  brigade. 

This  fact  was  much  to  Jim,  though  no 
one  knew  it :  it  tempered  his  mind  :  ruled 


106          STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 


his  life.  He  never  remembered  the  time 
when  he  did  not  know  the  story  his  moth 
er,  in  her  worn  black  dress  and  with  her 
pale  face,  used  to  tell  him  of  the  bullet- 
dented  sword  and  faded  red  sash  which 
hung  on  the  chamber  wall. 

They  were  the  poorest  people  in  the 
neighborhood.  Everybody  was  poor,  for 
the  country  lay  in  the  track  of  the  armies, 
and  the  war  had  swept  the  country  as 
clean  as  a  floor.  But  the  Uptons  were 
the  poorest  even  in  that  community. 
Others  recuperated,  pulled  themselves 
together,  and  began  after  a  time  to  get 
up.  The  Uptons  got  flatter  than  they 
were  before.  The  fences  (the  few  that 
were  left)  rotted  ;  the  fields  grew  up  in 
sassafras  and  pines ;  the  barns  blew 
down  ;  the  houses  decayed  ;  the  ditches 
filled  ;  the  chills  came. 

"  They're  the  shiftlesses'  people  in  the 
worl',"  said  Mrs.  Wagoner  with  a  shade 
of  asperity  in  her  voice  (or  was  it  satisfac- 


RUN    TO    SEED  107 


tion?).  Mrs.  Wagoner's  husband  had 
been  in  a  bomb-proof  during  the  war, 
when  Jim  Upton,  Jim's  father,  was  with 
his  company.  He  had  managed  to  keep 
his  teams  from  the  quartermasters,  and 
had  turned  up  after  the  war  the  richest 
man  in  the  neighborhood.  He  lived  on 
old  Colonel  DuvaFs  place,  which  he 
bought  for  Confederate  money. 

"  They're  the  shiftlesses'  people  in  the 
worl',"  said  Mrs.  Wagoner.  "  Mrs.  Up 
ton  ain't  got  any  spirit  ;  she  jus'  sets  still 
and  cries  her  eyes  out." 

This  was  true,  every  word  of  it.  And 
so  was  something  else  that  Mrs.  Wagoner 
said  in  a  tone  of  reprobation,  about  "  peo 
ple  who  made  their  beds  having  to  lay  on 
them  ;  "  this  process  of  incubation  being 
too  well  known  to  require  further  discus 
sion.  But  what  could  Mrs.  Upton  do  ? 
She  could  not  change  the  course  of  Des 
tiny.  One — especially  if  she  is  a  widow 
with  bad  eyes,  and  in  poor  health,  living 


108          STORIES   OF   THE   RAILWAY 

on  the  poorest  place  in  the  State — cannot 
stop  the  stars  in  their  courses.  She  could 
not  blot  out  the  past,  nor  undo  what  she 
had  done.  She  would  not  if  she  could. 
She  could  not  undo  what  she  had  done 
when  she  ran  away  with  Jim  and  married 
him.  She  would  not  if  she  could.  At 
least  the  memory  of  those  three  years  was 
her's,  and  nothing  could  take  it  from  her 
— not  debts,  nor  courts,  nor  anything. 
She  knew  he  wras  wild  when  she  married 
him.  Certainly  Mrs.  Wagoner  had  been 
careful  enough  to  tell  her  so,  and  to  tell 
every  one  else  so  too.  She  would  never 
forget  the  things  she  had  said.  Mrs. 
Wagoner  never  forgot  the  things  the 
young  girl  said  either— though  it  was 
more  the  way  she  had  looked  than  what 
she  had  said.  And  when  Mrs.  Wagoner 
descanted  on  the  poverty  of  the  Uptons 
she  used  to  end  with  the  declaration  : 
''Well,  it  ain't  any  fault  of  mine:  she 
can't  blame  me:  for  Heaven  knows  I 


RUN    TO    SEED  109 


warned  her :  I  did  my  duty ! "  Which 
was  true.  This  was  a  duty  Mrs.  Wago 
ner  seldom  omitted.  Mrs.  Upton  never 
thought  of  blaming  her,  or  anyone  else, 
Not  all  her  poverty  ever  drew  one  com 
plaint  from  her  lips.  She  simply  sat 
down  under  it,  that  was  all.  She  did  not 
expect  anything  else.  She  had  given  Jim 
to  the  South  as  gladly  as  any  woman  ever 
gave  her  heart  to  her  love.  She  would 
not  undo  it  if  she  could — not  even  to  have 
him  back,  and  God  knew  how  much  she 
wanted  him.  Was  not  his  death  glorious 
— his  name  a  heritage  for  his  son  ?  She 
could  not  undo  the  debts  which  encum 
bered  the  land  ;  nor  the  interest  which 
swallowed  it  up  ;  nor  the  suit  which  took 
it  from  her — that  is,  all  but  the  old  house 
and  the  two  poor  worn  old  fields  which 
were  her  dower.  She  would  have  given 
up  those  too  if  it  had  not  been  for  her 
children,  Jim  and  Kitty,  and  for  the  little 
old  enclosure  on  the  hill  under  the  big 


110         STORIES   OF   THE    RAILWAY 


thorn-trees  where  they  had  laid  him  when 
they  brought  him  back.  No,  she  could 
not  undo  the  past,  nor  alter  the  present, 
nor  change  the  future.  So  what  could 
she  do  ? 

In  her  heart  Mrs.  Wagoner  was  glad 
of  the  poverty  of  the  Uptons  ;  not  merely 
glad  in  the  general  negative  way  which 
warms  the  bosoms  of  most  of  us  as  we 
consider  how  much  better  off  we  are  than 
our  neighbors — the  "  Lord-I-thank-thee- 
that-I-am-not-as-other-men-are  "  way — but 
Mrs.  Wagoner  was  glad,  positively.  She 
was  glad  that  any  of  the  Uptons  and  the 
Duvals  were  poor.  One  of  her  grand 
fathers  had  been  what  Mrs.  Wagoner 
(when  she  mentioned  the  matter  at  all) 
called  "  Manager  "  for  one  of  the  Duvals. 
She  was  aware  that  most  people  did  not 
accept  that  term.  She  remembered  old 
Colonel  Duval— the  old  Colonel— tall, 
thin,  white,  grave,  aquiline.  She  had 
been  dreadfully  afraid  of  him.  She  had 


"  RUN   TO   SEED  "  III 

had  a  feeling  of  satisfaction  at  his  funeral. 
It  was  like  the  feeling  she  had  when  she 
learned  that  Colonel  Duval  had  not  for 
given  Betty  nor  left  her  a  cent.  Mrs. 
Wagoner  used  to  go  to  see  Mrs.  Upton — 
she  went  frequently.  She  carried  her 
things — especially  advice.  There  are  peo 
ple  whose  visits  are  like  spells  of  illness. 
It  took  Mrs.  Upton  a  fortnight  to  get 
over  one  of  her  visits — to  convalesce. 
Mrs.  Wagoner  was  a  mother  to  her  :  at 
least  she  herself  said  so.  In  some  re 
spects  it  was  rather  akin  to  the  substance 
of  that  name  which  forms  in  vinegar.  It 
was  hard  to  swallow  :  it  galled.  Even 
Mrs  Upton's  gentleness  was  overtaxed — 
and  rebelled.  She  had  stood  all  the  homi 
lies — all  the  advice.  But  when  Mrs. 
Wagoner,  with  her  lips  drawn  in,  after 
wringing  her  heart,  recalled  to  her  the 
warning  she  had  given  her  before  she 
married,  she  stopped  standing  it.  She 
did  not  sav  much  ;  but  it  was  enough  to 


112         STORIES   OF   THE   RAILWAY 


make  Mrs.  Wagoner's  stiff  bonnet-bows 
tremble.  Mrs.  Wagoner  walked  out  feel 
ing  chills  down  her  spine,  as  if  Colonel 
Duval  were  at  her  heels.  She  had  meant 
to  talk  about  sending  Jim  to  school ;  at 
least  she  said  so.  She  condoled  with 
every  one  in  the  neighborhood  on  the 
"  wretched  ignorance  "  in  which  Jim  was 
growing  up,  "  working  like  a  common 
negro."  She  called  him  "  that  ugly  boy." 
Jim  was  ugly — very  ugly.  He  was  slim, 
red-headed,  freckle-faced,  weak-eyed  ;  he 
stooped  and  he  stammered.  Yet  there 
was  something  about  him,  with  his  thin 
features,  which  made  one  look  twice. 
Mrs.  Wagoner  used  to  say  she  did  not 
know  where  that  boy  got  all  his  ugliness 
from,  for  she  must  admit  his  father  was 
rather  good-looking  before  he  became  so 
bloated,  and  Betty  Duval  would  have 
been  "  passable  "  if  she  had  any  "  vivac 
ity."  She  was  careful  in  her  limitations, 
Mrs.  Wagoner  was.  Some  women  will 


"  RUN    TO   SEED  "  113 

not  admit  others  are  pretty,  no  matter 
what  the  difference  in  their  ages  :  they 
feel  as  if  they  were  making  admissions 
against  themselves. 

Once  when  he  was  a  boy  Mrs.  Wagoner 
had  the  good  taste  to  refer  in  Jim's  pres 
ence  to  his  "homeliness,"  a  term  with 
which  she  sugar-coated  her  insult.  Jim 
grinned  and  shuffled  his  feet,  and  then 
said,  "  Kitty's  pretty. "  It  was  true  :  Kit 
ty  was  pretty  :  she  had  eyes  and  hair. 
You  could  not  look  at  her  without  seeing 
them — big  brown  eyes,  and  brown,  tum 
bled  hair.  Kitty  was  fifteen — two  years 
younger  than  Jim  in  187-. 

Jim  never  went  to  school.  They  were 
too  poor.  All  he  knew  his  mother  taught 
him  and  he  got  out  of  the  few  old  books 
in  the  book-case  left  by  the  war — odd  vol 
umes  of  the  Waverley  novels,  and  the 
Spectator,  "  Don  Quixote,"  and  a  few 
others,  stained  and  battered.  He  could 
not  have  gone  to  school  if  there  had  been 


114         STORIES   OF   THE   RAILWAY 

a  school  to  go  to  :  he  had  to  work  :  work, 
as  Mrs.  Wagoner  had  truthfully  said, 
"  like  a  common  nigger."  He  did  not 
mind  it  ;  a  bird  born  in  a  cage  cannot 
mind  it  much.  The  pitiful  part  is,  it  does 
not  know  anything  else.  Jim  did  not 
know  anything  else.  He  did  not  mind 
anything  much — except  chills.  He  even 
got  used  to  them  ;  would  just  lie  down 
and  shake  for  an  hour  and  then  go  to 
ploughing  again  as  soon  as  the  ague  was 
over,  with  the  fever  on  him.  He  had  to 
plough  ;  for  corn  was  necessary.  He  had 
this  compensation  :  he  was  worshipped  by 
two  people — his  mother  and  Kitty.  If 
other  people  thought  him  ugly,  they 
thought  him  beautiful.  If  others  thought 
him  dull,  they  thought  him  wonderfully 
clever  ;  if  others  thought  him  ignorant, 
they  knew  how  wise  he  was. 

Mrs.  Upton's  eyes  were  bad  ;  but  she 
saw  enough  to  see  Jim  ;  the  light  came 
into  the  house  with  him.  Kitty  sat  and 


RUN   TO    SEED  "  115 


gazed  at  him  with  speechless  admiration  ; 
hung  on  his  words,  which  were  few ; 
watched  for  his  smile,  which  was  rare. 
He  repaid  it  to  her  by  being — Jim.  He 
slaved  for  her  ;  waited  for  her  (when  a 
boy  waits  for  his  little  sister  it  is  some 
thing)  ;  played  with  her  when  he  had  time 
(this  also  was  something)  ;  made  traps  for 
her;  caught  her  young 'squirrels  ;  was  at 
once  her  slave  and  her  idol.  As  he  grew 
up  he  did  not  have  time  to  play.  He  had 
to  plough  :  "just  like  a  common  nigger," 
Mrs.  Wagoner  said.  In  this  she  spoke 
the  truth. 

It  is  a  curious  thing  that  farming  paid 
better  shortly  after  the  war  than  it  did 
later.  Lands  fell.  Times  grew  harder. 
They  were  always  growing  harder  with 
Jim.  The  land  was  worked  out.  Guano 
was  necessary  to  make  anything  grow. 
Guano  was  bought  on  credit.  The  crops 
would  not  pay.  Several  summers  there 
was  drouth  ;  crops  failed.  One  of  the  two 


n6 


STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 


old  mules  he  had  died  ;  Jim  ploughed 
with  one.  Then  he  broke  his  leg.  When 
he  got  about  again  he  was  lame  ;  the  leg 
had  shortened. 

"They're   the   shiftlesses'  folks  in  the 


woiT,"  said  Mrs.  Wagoner;  "they  can't 

blame  me.  Heaven  knows  I  told "  etc. 

Which  was  true — more  than  true. 

Jim  ploughed  on,  only  slower  than  ever, 
thinner  than  ever,  sleepier  than  ever. 

One  day  something  happened  which 
waked  him  up.  It  was  a  Sunday.  They 


"  RUN   TO    SEED  117 

went  to  church ;  they  always  went  to 
church — old  St.  Ann's — whenever  there 
was  service.  There  was  service  there 
since  the  war  only  every  first  and  third 
Sunday,  and  every  other  fifth  Sunday. 
The  Uptons  and  the  Duvals  had  been 
vestrymen  from  the  time  they  had  brought 
the  bricks  over  from  England,  generations 
ago.  They  had  sat,  one  family  in  one  of 
the  front  semicircular  pews  on  one  side 
the  chancel,  the  other  family  in  the  other. 
Mrs.  Upton,  after  the  war,  had  her  choice 
of  the  pews  ;  for  all  had  gone  but  herself, 
Jim,  and  Kitty.  She  had  changed,  the 
Sunday  after  her  marriage,  to  the  Upton 
side,  and  she  clung  loyally  to  it  ever  after. 
Mrs.  Wagoner  had  taken  the  other  pew — 
a  cold,  she  explained  at  first,  had  made 
her  deaf.  She  always  spoke  of  it  after 
ward  as  "  our  pew."  (The  Billings,  from 
which  Mrs.  Wagoner  come,  had  not  been 
Episcopalians  until  Mrs.  Wagoner  mar 
ried.)  Carrie  Wagoner,  who  was  a  year 


Il8          STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 


older  than  Kitty,  used  to  sit  by  her 
mother,  with  her  big  hat  and  brown  hair. 
Jim,  in  right  of  his  sex,  sat  in  the  end  of 
his  pew. 

On  this  Sunday  in  question  Jim  drove 
his  mother  and  Kitty  to  church  in  the 
horse  cart.  The  old  carriage  was  a 
wreck,  slowly  dropping  to  pieces.  The 
chickens  roosted  in  it.  The  cart  was  the 
only  vehicle  remaining  which  had  two 
sound  wheels,  and  even  one  of  these 
"  wabbled  "  a  good  deal,  and  the  cart  was 
"  shackling."  But  straw  placed  in  the 
bottom  made  it  fairly  comfortable.  Jim 
always  had  clean  straw  in  it.  His  mother 
and  Kitty  noticed  it.  Kitty  looked  so 
well.  They  reached  church.  The  day 
was  warm,  Mr.  Bickersteth  was  dry.  Jim 
went  to  sleep  during  the  sermon.  He 
frequently  did  this.  He  had  been  up 
since  four.  When  service  was  over  he 
partially  waked — about  half-waked.  He 
was  standing  in  the  aisle  moving  toward 


RUN    TO    SEED  119 


the  door  with  the  rest  of  the  congregation. 
A  voice  behind  him  caught  his  ear  : 

"  What  a  lovely  girl  Kitty  Upton  is." 
It  was  Mrs.  Harrison,  who  lived  at  the 
other  end  of  the  parish.  Jim  knew  the 
voice.  Another  voice  replied  : 

"If  she  only  were  not  always  so  shab 
by  !  "  Jim  knew  this  one  also.  It  was 
Mrs.  Wagoner's.  Jim  waked. 

"  Yes,    but  even  her  old  darned  dress 

cannot  hide  her.     She  reminds  me  of ' 

Jim  did  not  know  what  it  was  to  which 
Mrs.  Harrison  likened  her.  But  he  knew 
it  was  something  beautiful. 

"Yes,"  said  Mrs.  Wagoner;  then 
added,  "  Poor  thing,  she's  got  no  educa 
tion,  and  never  will  have.  To  think  that 
old  Colonel  Duval's  fam'bly's  come  to 
this !  Well,  they  can't  blame  me. 
They're  clean  run  to  seed." 

Jim  got  out  into  the  air.  He  felt  sick. 
He  had  been  hit  vitally.  This  was  what 
people  thought !  and  it  was  true.  He 


120         STORIES    OF   THE    RAILWAY 


went  to  get  his  cart.  (He  did  not  speak 
to  Kitty.)  His  home  came  before  his  eyes 
like  ^a  photograph  :  fences  down,  gates 
gone,  houses  ruinous,  fields  barren.  It 
came  to  him  as  if  stamped  on  the  retina 
by  a  lightning -flash.  He  had  worked — 
worked  hard.  But  it  was  no  use.  It  was 
true  :  they  were  "clean  run  to  seed."  He 
helped  his  mother  and  Kitty  into  the  cart 
silently — doggedly.  Kitty  smiled  at  him. 
It  hurt  him  like  a  blow.  He  saw  every 
worn  place,  every  darn  in  her  old  dress 
and  little  faded  jacket.  Mrs.  Wagoner 
drove  past  them  in  her  carriage,  leaning 
out  of  the  window  and  calling  that  she 
took  the  liberty  of  passing  as  she  drove 
faster  than  they.  Jim  gave  his  old  mule 
a  jerk  which  made  him  throw  up  his  head 
and  wince  with  pain.  He  was  sorry  for  it. 
But  he  had  been  jerked  up  short  himself. 
He  was  quivering  too. 


RUN    TO    SEED    '  121 


II. 

ON  the  following  Friday  the  President 
of  one  of  the  great  railway  lines  which 
cross  Virginia  was  in  his  office  when  the 
door  opened  after  a  gentle  knock  and 
some  one  entered.  (The  offices  of  presi 
dents  of  railroads  had  not  then  become 
the  secret  and  mysterious  sanctums  which 
they  have  since  become.)  The  President 
was  busily  engaged  with  two  or  three  of 
the  Directors;  wealthy  capitalists  from  the 
North,  who  had  come  down  on  important 
business.  He  was  very  much  engrossed  , 
and  he  did  not  look  up  directly.  When 
he  did  he  saw  standing  inside  the  door 
a  queer  figure  —  long,  slim,  angular— 
a  man  who  looked  a  boy,  or  a  boy  who 
looked  like  a  man — red-headed,  freckle- 
faced,  bashful — in  a  coat  too  tight  even 
for  his  thin  figure,  breeches  too  short  for 
his  long  legs  ;  his  hat  was  old  and  brown  ; 
his  shirt  was  clean. 


122         STORIES   OF   THE   RAILWAY 


"Well,  what  do  you  want?"  The 
President  was  busy. 

It  was  Jim.  His  face  twitched  several 
times  before  any  sound  came  : 

1 '  -  - 1-  w-  w-  w-  want  t-  t-  t-  to  ge-  get 
a  place." 

"  This  is  not  the  place  to  get  it;  I  have 
no  place  for  you." 

The  President  turned  back  to  his 
friends.  At  the  end  of  ten  minutes,  see 
ing  one  of  his  visitors  look  toward  the 
door,  he  stopped  in  the  middle  of  a  sen 
tence  and  glanced  around. 

The  figure  was  still  there — motionless. 
The  President  thought  he  had  been  out. 
He  had  not. 

"Well?"     His  key  was  high. 

" I-  I-  w-  w-  want  to-  to  get  a 

place." 

"  I  told  you  I  had  no  place  for  you. 
Go  to  the  Superintendent." 

" I-  I've  b-  b-  b-  been  to  him." 

"  Well,  what  did  he  say  ?  " 


"  RUN   TO    SEED  "  123 

"  Si-  si-  si-  says  he  ain't  got  any 
place." 

"  Well,  I  haven't  any.  Go  to  Mr. 
Blake." 

" I've  b-  been  to  him." 

"Well,  go  to— to "  The  President 

was  looking  for  a  paper.  It  occupied  his 
mind.  He  did  not  think  any  further  of 
Jim.  But  Jim  was  there. 

"  —  Go-  go  where  ?  " 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know — go  anywhere — go 
out  of  here" 

Jim's  face  worked.  He  turned  and 
went  slowly  out.  As  he  reached  the  door 
he  said  : 

"  Go-go-  good  evening,  g-  gentlemen." 

The  President's  heart  relented:  "Go 
to  the  Superintendent,"  he  called. 

Next  day  he  was  engaged  with  his  Di 
rectors  when  the  door  opened  and  the 
same  apparition  stepped  within  —  tall, 
slim,  red-haired,  with  his  little,  tight  coat, 
short  trousers,  and  clean  shirt. 


124          STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 


The  President  frowned. 

"  Well,  what  is  it  ?  " 

" I-  I-  I  w-  w-  w-  went  to-  to  the 

s-  s-  Superintendent." 

"  Well,  what  about  it  ?  " 

"  Y-  y-  you  told  me  t-  to  go-  go  to 
him.  H-  e-  e  ain't  got  any  place."  The 
Directors  smiled.  One  of  them  leaned 
back  in  his  chair,  took  out  a  cigar  and 
prepared  to  cut  the  end. 

"Well,  I  can't  help  it.  I  haven't  any 
thing  for  you.  I  told  you  that  yesterday. 
You  must  not  come  here  bothering  me  ; 
get  out." 

Jim  stood  still — perfectly  motionless. 
He  looked  as  if  he  had  been  there  always 
— would  be  there  always.  The  Director 
with  the  cigar,  having  cut  it,  took  out  a 
gold  match-box,  and  opened  it  slowly, 
looking  at  Jim  with  an  amused  smile. 
The  President  frowned  and  opened  his 
mouth  to  order  him  out.  He  changed 
his  mind. 


"  RUN    TO    SEED  "  125 

"  What  is  your  name  ?  " 

"  J-  J-  James  Upton." 

"Where  from?" 

Jim  told  him. 

"  Whose  son  are  you  ?  " 

' '  C-  c-  c-  Captain  J-  J-  James  Upton's. " 

"  What !  You  don't  look  much  like 
him  ! 

Jim  shuffled  one  foot.  One  corner  of 
his  mouth  twitched  up  curiously.  It 
might  have  been  a  smile.  He  looked 
straight  at  the  blank  wall  before  him. 

"  You  are  not  much  like  your  mother 
either — I  used  to  know  her  as  a  girl. 
How's  that?  " 

Jim  shuffled  the  other  foot^a  little. 

"  R-  r-  run  to  seed,  I  reckon." 

The  President  was  a  farmer — prided 
himself  on  it.  The  reply  pleased  him. 
He  touched  a  bell.  A  clerk  entered. 

"  Ask  Mr.  Wake  to  come  here." 

"  Can  you  carry  a  barrel  of  flour?  "  he 
asked  Jim. 


126          STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 

"I-  I'll  get  it  there,"  said  Jim.  He 
leaned  a  little  forward. 

"  Or  a  sack  of  salt  ?  They  are  right 
heavy." 

"  I-  I-  I'll  get  it  there,"  said  Jim. 

Mr.  Wake  appeared. 

"Write  Mr.  Day  to  give  this  man  a 
place  as  brakeman." 

"  Yes,  sir.  Come  this  way."  This  to 
Jim. 

Jim  electrified  them  all  by  suddenly 
bursting  out  crying. 

The  tension  had  given  way.  He  walked 
up  to  the  wall  and  leaned  his  head  against 
it  with  his  face  on  his  arm,  shaking  from 
head  to  foot,  sobbing  aloud. 

"Thank  you,  I  —  I'm  ever  so  much 
obliged  to  you,"  he  sobbed. 

The  President  rose  and  walked  rapidly 
about  the  room. 

Suddenly  Jim  turned  and,  with  his  arm 
over  his  eyes,  held  out  his  hand  to  the 
President. 


RUN    TO    SEED  127 


"  Good-by."     Then  he  went  out. 

There  was  a  curious  smile  on  the  faces 
of  the  Directors  as  the  door  closed. 

"Well,  I  never  saw  anything  like  that 
before,"  said  one  of  them.  The  President 
said  nothing. 

"  Run  to  seed."  quoted  the  oldest  of 
the  Directors;  "rather  good  expres 
sion  !  " 

"  Damned  good  seed,  gentlemen,"  said 
the  President,  a  little  shortly.  "  Duval 
and  Upton — that  fellow's  father  was  in 
my  command.  Died  at  Gettysburg. 
He'd  fight  hell." 

Jim  got  a  place — brakeman  on  a  freight- 
train.  That  night  Jim  wrote  a  letter 
home.  You'd  have  thought  he  had  been 
elected  president. 

It  was  a  hard  life  :  harder  than  most. 
The  work  was  hard,  the  fare  was  hard  ; 
the  life  was  hard.  Standing  on  top  of 
rattling  cars  as  they  rushed  along  in  the 
night  around  curves,  over  bridges, 


128          STORIES   OF   THE    RAILWAY 


through  tunnels, 
with  the  rain  and  snow 
pelting  in  your  face,  and  the  tops  as  slip 
pery  as  ice.     There  was  excitement  about 
it,  too  :  a  sense  of  risk  and  danger.     Jim 


"  RUN    TO    SEED  129 

did  not  mind  it  much.  He  thought  of  his 
mother  and  Kitty. 

There  \vas  a  freemasonry  among  the 
men.  All  knew  each  other  ;  hated  or  liked 
each  other  ;  nothing  negative  about  it. 

It  was  a  bad  road.  Worse  than  the  av 
erage.  Twice  the  amount  of  traffic  was 
done  on  the  single  track  that  should  have 
been  done.  Result  was  men  were 
ground  up — more  than  on  most  roads. 
More  men  were  killed  in  proportion  to 
the  number  employed  than  were  killed  in 
service  during  the  war.  The  esprit  de 
corps  was  strong.  Men  stood  by  their 
trains  and  by  each  other.  When  a  man 
left  his  engine  in  sight  of  trouble,  the  au 
thorities  might  not  know  about  it,  but  the 
men  did.  Unless  there  was  cause  he  had 
to  leave.  Sam  Wray  left  his  engine  in 
sight  of  a  broken  bridge  after  he  reversed. 
The  engine  stopped  on  the  track.  The 
officers  never  knew  of  it ;  but  Wray  and 
his  fireman  both  changed  to  another  road. 


130          STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 

When  a  man  even  got  shaky  and  began 
to  run  easy,  the  superintendent  might  not 
mind  it  ;  but  the  men  did  ;  he  had  to  go. 
A  man  had  to  have  not  only  courage  but 
nerve. 

Jim  was  not  especially  popular  among 
men.  He  was  reserved,  slow,  awkward. 
He  was  "  pious  "  (that  is,  did  not  swear). 
He  was  "  stuck  up  "  (did  not  tell  "  funny 
things,"  by  which  was  meant  vulgar  sto 
ries ;  nor  laugh  at  them  either).  And  ac 
cording  to  Dick  Rail,  he  was  "  stingy  as 
h— 1." 

These  things  were  not  calculated  to 
make  him  popular,  and  he  was  not.  He 
was  a  sort  of  butt  for  the  free  and  easy 
men  who  lived  in  their  cabs  and  cabooses, 
obeyed  their  "  orders,"  and  owned  noth 
ing  but  their  overalls  and  their  shiny 
Sunday  clothes.  He  was  good-tempered, 
though.  Took  all  their  gibes  and  "  dev'l- 
ing  "  quietly,  and  for  the  most  part  silent 
ly.  So,  few  actually  disliked  him.  Dick 


RUN    TO    SEED  13! 


Rail,  the  engineer  of  his  crew,  was  one  of 
those  few.  Dick  "  despised  "  him.  Dick 
was  big,  brawny,  coarse :  coarse  in  looks, 
coarse  in  talk,  coarse  in  feeling,  and  when 
he  had  liquor  in  him  he  was  mean.  Jim 
"bothered"  him,  he  said.  He  made 
Jim's  life  a  burden  to  him.  He  laid  him 
self  out  to  do  it.  It  became  his  occupa 
tion.  He  thought  about  it  when  Jim  was 
not  present ;  laid  plans  for  it.  There  was 
something  about  Jim  that  was  different 
from  most  others.  When  Jim  did  not 
laugh  at  a  "  hard  story,"  but  just  sat  still, 
some  men  would  stop  ;  Dick  always  told 
another  harder  yet,  and  called  attention 
to  Jim's  looks.  His  stock  was  inexhausti 
ble.  His  mind  was  like  a  spring  which 
ran  muddy  water  ;  its  flow  was  perpetual. 
The  men  thought  Jim  did  not  mind.  He 
lost  three  pounds  ;  which  for  a  man  who 
was  six  feet  (and  would  have  been  six 
feet  two  if  he  had  been  straight)  and  who 
weighed  122,  was  considerable. 


132          STORIES    OF   THE    RAILWAY 


It  is  astonishing  how  one  man  can  cre 
ate  a  public  sentiment.  One  woman  can 
ruin  a  reputation  as  effectually  as  a 
churchful.  One  bullet  can  kill  a  man  as 
dead  as  a  bushel,  if  it  hits  him  right.  So 
Dick  Rail  injured  Jim,  for  Dick  was  an 
authority.  He  swore  the  biggest  oaths, 
wore  the  largest  watch-chain,  knew  his 
engine  better  and  sat  it  steadier  than  any 
man  on  the  road.  He  had  had  a  pas 
senger  train  again  and  again,  but  he  was 
too  fond  of  whiskey.  It  was  too  risky. 
Dick  affected  Jim's  standing  ;  told  stories 
about  him  ;  made  his  life  a  burden  to 
him.  "He  shan't  stay  on  the  road,"  he 

used    to    say.       "  He's     stingier'n    . 

Carries  his  victuals  about  with  him — I 
b'lieve  he  sleeps  with  one  o'  them  7-tal- 
ians  in  a  goods  box."  This  was  true — at 
least  about  carrying  his  food  with  him. 
(The  rest  was  Dick's  humor.)  Messing 
cost  too  much.  The  first  two  months' 
pay  went  to  settle  an  old  guano-bill ;  but 


RUN    TO    SEED  "  133 


the  third  month's  was  Jim's.  The  day  he 
drew  that  he  fattened  a  good  deal.  At 
least,  he  looked  so.  It  was  eighty-two 
dollars  (for  Jim  ran  extra  runs — made 
double  time  whenever  he  could).  Jim 
had  never  had  so  much  money  in  his  life  ; 
had  hardly  ever  seen  it.  He  walked 
about  the  streets  that  night  till  nearly 
midnight,  feeling  the  wad  of  notes  in  his 
breast-pocket.  Next  day  a  box  went 
down  the  country,  and  a  letter  with  it, 
and  that  night  Jim  could  not  have  bought 
a  chew  of  tobacco.  The  next  letter  he 
got  from  home  was  heavy.  Jim  smiled 
over  it  a  good  deal,  and  cried  a  little  too. 
He  wondered  how  Kitty  looked  in  her 
new  dress,  and  if  the  barrel  of  flour  made 
good  bread  ;  and  if  his  mother's  shawl 
was  warm. 

One  day  he  was  changed  to  the  passen 
ger  service,  the  express.  It  was  a  promo 
tion,  paid  more,  and  relieved  him  from 
Dick  Rail.  He  had  some  queer  experi- 


134          STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 

ences  being  ordered  around,  but  he  swal 
lowed  them  all.  He  had  not  been  there 
three  weeks  when  Mrs.  Wagoner  was  a 
passenger  on  the  train.  Carry  was  with 
her.  They  had  moved  to  town.  (Mr. 
Wagoner  was  interested  in  railroad  de 
velopment.)  Mrs.  Wagoner  called  him 
to  her  seat,  and  talked  to  him — in  a 
loud  voice.  Mrs.  Wagoner  had  a  loud 
voice.  It  had  the  "  carrying "  quality. 
She  did  not  shake  hands  ;  Carry  did,  and 
said  she  was  so  glad  to  see  him  :  she  had 
been  down  home  the  week  before — had 
seen  his  mother  and  Kitty.  Mrs.  WTag- 
oner  said  they  still  kept  their  plantation 
as  a  country  place.  Carry  said  Kitty 
looked  so  well.  Her  new  dress  was  lovely. 
Mrs.  Wagoner  said  his  mother's  eyes  were 
worse.  She  and  Kitty  had  walked  over 
to  see  them  to  show  Kitty's  dress.  She 
had  promised  that  Mr.  Wagoner  would 
do  what  he  could  for  him  on  the  road. 
Next  month  Jim  went  back  to  the 


"  RUN    TO    SEED  135 

freight  service.  He  preferred  Dick  Rail. 
He  got  him.  Dick  was  worse  than  ever, 
his  appetite  was  whetted  by  abstinence  ; 
he  returned  to  his  attack  with  renewed 
zest.  He  never  tired— never  flagged. 
He  was  perpetual :  he  was  remorseless. 
He  made  Jim's  life  a  wilderness.  Jim 
said  nothing,  just  slouched  along  silenter 
than  ever,  quieter  than  ever,  closer  than 
ever.  He  took  to  going  to  another 
church  on  Sunday  than  the  one  he  had 
attended,  a  more  fashionable  one  than 
that.  The  Wagoners  went  there.  Jim 
sat  far  back  in  the  gallery,  very  far  back, 
where  he  could  just  see  the  top  of  Carry's 
head,  her  big  hat  and  her  face,  and  could 
not  see  Mrs.  Wagoner,  who  sat  nearer 
the  gallery.  It  had  a  curious  effect  on 
him  ;  he  never  went  to  sleep  there.  He 
took  to  going  up-town,  walking  by  the 
stores — looking  in  at  the  windows  of  tai 
lors  and  clothiers.  Once  he  actually  went 
into  a  shop  and  asked  the  price  of  a  new 


136          STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 


suit  of  clothes.  (He  needed  them  badly.) 
The  tailor  unfolded  many  rolls  of  cloth 
and  talked  volubly  :  talked  him  dizzy. 
Jim  looked  wistfully  at  them,  rubbed  his 
hand  over  them  softly,  felt  the  money  in 
his  pocket ;  and  came  out.  He  said  he 
thought  he  might  come  in  again.  Next 
day  he  did  not  have  the  money.  Kitty 
wrote  him  she  could  not  leave  home  to  go 
to  school  on  their  mother's  account,  but 
she  would  buy  books,  and  she  was  learn 
ing  ;  she  would  learn  fast,  her  mother 
was  teaching  her  ;  and  he  was  the  best 
brother  in  the  world,  the  whole  world ; 
and  they  had  a  secret,  but  he  must  wait. 

One  day  Jim  got  a  bundle.  It  was  a 
new  suit  of  clothes.  On  top  was  a  letter 
from  Kitty.  This  was  the  secret.  She 
and  her  mother  had  sent  for  the  cloth 
and  made  them  ;  hoped  they  would  fit. 
They  had  cried  over  them.  Jim  cried  a 
little  too.  He  put  them  on.  They  did 
not  fit,  were  much  too  large.  Under 


RUN   TO    SEED  "  137 


Dick  Rail's  fire  Jim  had  grown  even  thin 
ner  than  before.  But  he  wore  them  to 
church.  He  felt  that  it  would  have  been 
untrue  to  his  mother  and  Kitty  not  to 
wear  them.  He  was  sorry  to  meet  Dick 
Rail  on  the  street.  Dick  had  on  a  black 
broadcloth  coat,  a  velvet  vest,  and  large- 
checked  trousers.  Dick  looked  Jim  over. 
Jim  winced,  flushed  a  little  :  he  was  not 
so  sunburned  now.  Dick  saw  it.  Next 
week  Dick  caught  Jim  in  a  crowd  in  the 
"  yard  "  waiting  for  their  train.  He  told 
about  the  meeting.  He  made  a  double 
shot.  He  said,  "Jim's  in  love,  he's  got 
new  clothes  !  you  ought  to  see  'em !  " 
Dick  was  graphic  ;  he  wound  up  :  "  They 
hung  on  him  like  breechin'  on  his  old 

mule.     By  !    I   believe   he  was   too 

stingy   to   buy 'em,    and   made   'em 

himself."  There  was  a  shout  from  the 
crowd.  Jim's  face  worked.  There^  was 
a  handspike  lying  near  and  he  seized  it. 
Someone  grabbed  him,  but  he  shook 


138          STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 

him  off  as  if  he  had  been  a  child.  Why 
he  did  not  kill  Dick  no  one  ever  knew. 
He  meant  to  do  it.  For  some  time  they 
thought  he  was  dead.  He  laid  off  for  a 
month.  After  that  Jim  wore  what  clothes 
he  chose  :  no  one  ever  troubled  him. 

So  he  went  on  in  the  same  way  :  slow, 
sleepy,  stuttering,  thin,  stingy,  ill-dressed, 
lame,  the  butt  of  his  tormentors. 

He  was  made  a  fireman  ;  preferred  it 
to  being  a  conductor,  it  led  to  being  an 
engineer,  which  paid  more.  He  ran  extra 
trips  whenever  he  could,  up  and  double 
straight  back.  He  could  stand  an  im 
mense  amount  of  work.  If  he  got  sleepy 
he  put  tobacco  in  his  eyes  to  keep  them 
open.  It  was  bad  for  the  eyes,  but 
waked  him  up.  Kitty  was  going  to  take 
music  next  year,  and  that  cost  money. 
He  had  not  been  home  for  several  months, 
but  was  going  at  Christmas. 

They  did  not  have  any  sight  tests  then. 
But  the  new  Directory  meant  to  be  thor- 


"RUN  TO  SEED"  139 

ough.  Mr.  Wagoner  had  become  a  Di 
rector,  had  his  eye  on  the  presidency. 
Jim  was  one  day  sent  for,  asked  about 
his  eyes  ;  they  were  bad.  There  was  not 
a  doubt  about  it.  They  were  inflamed; 
he  could  not  see  a  hundred  yards.  He 
did  not  tell  them  about  the  extra  trips 
and  putting  the  tobacco  in  them.  Dick 
Rail  must  have  told  about  him.  They 
said  he  must  go.  Jim  turned  white.  He 
went  to  his  little  room,  close  up  under  the 
roof  of  a  little  house  in  a  back  street,  and 
sat  down  in  the  dark ;  thought  about  his 
mother  and  Kitty,  and  dimly  about  some 
one  else  ;  wrote  his  mother  and  Kitty  a 
letter,  said  he  was  coming  home— called 
it  "  a  visit;"  cried  over  the  letter,  but 
was  careful  not  to  cry  on  it.  He  was  a 
real  cry-baby—Jim  was. 

"  Just  run  to  seed,"  he  said  to  himself, 
bitterly,  over  and  over;  "just  run  to 
seed."  Then  he  went  to  sleep. 

The  following  day  he  went  down  to  the 


140         STORIES   OF   THE   RAILWAY 


railroad.  That  was  the  last  day.  Next 
day  he  would  be  "  off."  The  trainmaster 
saw  him  and  called  him.  A  special  was 
just  going  out.  The  Directors  were  go 
ing  over  the  road  in  the  Officers'  car. 
Dick  Rail  was  the  engineer,  and  his  fire 
man  had  been  taken  sick.  Jim  must  take 
the  place.  Jim  had  a  mind  not  to  do  it. 
He  hated  Dick.  He  thought  of  how  he 
had  pursued  him.  But  he  heard  a  voice 
behind  him  and  turned.  Carry  was  stand 
ing  down  the  platform,  talking  with  some 
elderly  gentlemen.  She  had  on  a  travel 
ling  cap  and  ulster.  She  saw  him  and 
came  forward — a  step  : 

"  How  do  you  do  ?  "  she  held  out  her 
little  gloved  hand.  She  was  going  out 
over  the  road  with  her  father.  Jim  took 
off  his  hat  and  shook  hands  with  her. 
Dick  Rail  saw  him.  walked  round  the 
other  side  of  the  engine,  and  tried  to  take 
off  his  hat  like  that.  It  was  not  a  success  ; 
Dick  knew  it.  Jim  went. 


"  RUN    TO   SEED  " 


141 


"  Who  was  that?  "  one  of  the  elderly 
gentlemen  asked  Carry. 

"  An  old  friend  of  mine— a  gentleman," 
she  said. 

"Rather  run  to  seed — hey?"  the  old 
fellow  quoted,  without  knowing  exactly 
why  ;  for  he  only  half  recognized  Jim,  if 
he  recognized  him  at  all. 

They  started.  It  was  a  bad  trip.  The 
weather  was  bad,  the  road  was  bad,  the 
engine  bad  ;  Dick  bad— worse  than  all. 
Jim  had  a  bad  time  :  he  was  to  be  off 
when  he  got  home.  What  would  his 
mother  and  Kitty  do  ? 

Once  Carry  came  (brought  by  the  Presi 
dent),  and  rode  in  the  engine  for 
-  little  while.     Jirn  helped 
her  up  and  spread  his 
coat  for  her  to  sit  on, 
put  his  overcoat  un 
der    her    feet  ;     his 
heart  was  in  it.    Dick 
was   sullen,  and  Jim 


142          STORIES    OF   THE    RAILWAY 


had  to  show  her  about  the  engine.  When 
she  got  down  to  go  back  to  the  car  she 
thanked  him — she  "had  enjoyed  it  great 
ly '' —  she  "would  like  to  try  it  again." 
Jim  smiled.  He  was  almost  good-looking 
when  he  smiled. 

Dick  was  meaner  than  ever  after  that, 
sneered  at  Jim — swore  ;  but  Jim  didn't 
mind  it.  He  was  thinking  of  someone  else, 
and  of  the  rain  which  would  prevent  her 
coming  again. 

They  were  on  the  return  trip,  and 
were  half-way  home  when  the  accident 
happened.  It  was  just  "  good  dusk,"  and 
it  had  been  raining  all  night  and  all  day, 
and  the  road  was  as  rotten  as  mud.  The 
special  was  behind  and  was  making  up. 
She  had  the  right  of  way,  and  she  was  fly 
ing.  She  rounded  a  curve  just  above  a 
small  "fill,"  under  which  was  a  little 
stream,  nothing  but  a  mere  "branch." 
In  good  weather  it  would  never  be  no 
ticed.  The  gay  party  behind  were  at  din- 


RUN    TO    SEED  "  143 


ner.  The  first  thing  they  knew,  was  the 
sudden  jerk  which  came  from  reversing 
the  engine  at  full  speed,  and  the  grind  as 
the  wheels  slid  along  under  the  brakes. 
Then  they  stopped  with  a  bump  which 
spilled  them  out  of  their  seats,  set  the 
lamps  to  swinging,  and  sent  the  things  on 
the  table  crashing  on  the  floor.  No  one 
was  hurt,  only  shaken,  and  they  crowded 
out  of  the  car  to  learn  the  cause.  They 
found  it.  The  engine  was  half  buried  in 
wet  earth  on  the  other  side  of  the  little 
washout,  with  the  tender  jammed  up  into 
the  cab.  The  whole  was  wrapped  in  a 
dense  cloud  of  escaping  steam.  The  noise 
was  terrific.  The  big  engineer,  bare-head 
ed  and  covered  with  mud,  and  with  his 
face  deadly  white,  was  trying  to  get  down 
to  the  engine.  Someone  was  in  there. 

They  got  him  out  after  a  while  (but  it 
took  some  time)  and  laid  him  on  the 
ground,  while  a  mattress  was  got.  It  was 
Jim. 


144         STORIES    OF   THE   RAILWAY 

Carry  had  been  weeping.  She  sat  down 
and  took  his  head  in  her  lap,  and  wiped 
his  blackened  and  bleeding  face  with  her 
lace  handkerchief;  and  smoothed  his  wet 
hair. 

The  newspaper  accounts,  which  are  al 
ways  reflections  of  what  public  sentiment 
is,  or  should  be,  spoke  of  it — some,  as  "  a 
providential;" — others,  as  "a  miracu 
lous;" — and  yet  others  as  "  a  fortunate  " 
escape  on  the  part  of  the  President  and 
the  Directors  of  the  road,  according  to  the 
tendencies,  religious  or  otherwise,  of  their 
paragraphists. 

They  mentioned  casually  that  "  only 
one  person  was  hurt — an  employee,  name 
not  ascertained."  And  one  or  two  had 
some  gush  about  the  devotion  of  the  beau 
tiful  young  lady,  the  daughter  of  one  of 
the  directors  of  the  road,  who  happened  to 
be  on  the  train,  and  who,  "  like  a  minis 
tering  angel,  held  the  head  of  the  wound 
ed  man  in  her  lap  after  he  was  taken  from 


RUN   TO    SEED  "  145 


the  wreck."  A  good  deal  was  made  of 
this  picture,  which  was  extensively  copied. 

Dick  Rail's  account,  after  he  had  come 
back  from  carrying  the  broken  body  down 
to  the  old  place  in  the  country,  and  help 
ing  to  lay  it  away  in  the  old  enclosure  un 
der  the  big  trees  on  the  hill,  was  this  : 

"  By !  "  he  said,  when  he  stood  in 

the  yard,  with  a  solemn-faced  group 
around  him,  "we  were  late,  and  I  was 
just  shaking  'em  up.  1  had  been  mean- 
er'n  hell  to  Jim  all  the  trip  (I  didn't  know 
him,  and  you  all  didn't  neither),  and  I 
was  workin'  him  for  all  he  was  worth,  I 
didn't  give  him  a  minute.  The  sweat  was 
rolling  off  him,  and  I  was  damnin'  him 
with  every  shovelful.  We  was  runnin' 
under  orders  to  make  up,  and  we  were 
just  rounding  the  curve  this  side  of  Ridge 
Hill,  when  Jim  hollered.  He  saw  it  as  he 
raised  up  with  the  shovel  in  his  hand  to 
wipe  the  sweat  off  his  face,  and  hollered 
to  me,  '  My  God  !  Look,  Dick  !  Jump  !  ' 


146          STORIES   OF   THE    RAILWAY 


"  I  looked  and  Hell  \vasright  there.  He 
caught  the  lever  and  reversed,  and  put  on 
the  air  before  I  saw  it,  and  then  grabbed 
me  and  flung  me  clean  out  of  the  cab  : 
'  Jump  !  '  he  says,  as  he  give  me  a  swing. 
I  jumped,  expectin"  of  course  he  was 
comin'  too  ;  and  as  I  lit,  I  saw  him  turn 
and  catch  the  lever  and  put  on  the  sand. 
The  old  engine  was  jumpin'  nigh  off  the 
track.  But  she  was  too  near.  In  she 
went,  and  the  tender  right  on  her.  You 
may  talk  about  his  eyes  bein'  bad  ;  but 
when  he  gave  me  that 
swing,  they  looked 
to  me  like  coals  of 
fire.  When  we 
got  him  out 
'twarn't  Jim. 
He  w  a  r  n  '  t 
n  o  t  h  i  n  '  but 
mud  and  ash 
es.  He  warn't 
quite  dead; 


"  RUN    TO    SEED  147 

opened  his  eyes,  and  breathed  onct  or 
twict;  but  I  don't  think  he  knew  any 
thing,  he  was  so  smashed  up.  We  laid 
him  out  on  the  grass,  and  that  young"  lady 
took  his  head  in  her  lap  and  cried  over 
him  (she  had  come  and  seed  him  in  the 
engine),  and  said  she  knew  his  mother  and 
sister  down  in  the  country  (she  used  to  live 
down  there)  ;  they  was  gentlefolks ;  that 
Jim  was  all  they  had.  And  when  one  of 
them  old  director-fellows  who  had  been 
swilling  himself  behind  there  come  aroun,' 
with  his  kid  gloves  on  and  his  hands  in  his 
great-coat  pockets,  lookin'  down,  and 
sayin'  something"  about,  *  Poor  fellow, 
couldn't  he  'a  jumped  ?  Why  didn't  he 
jump?  '  I  let  him  have  it ;  I  said,  '  Yes, 
and  if  it  hadn't  been  for  him,  you  and  I'd 
both  been  frizzin'  this  minute.'  And  the 
President  standin'  there  said  to  some  of 
them,  '  That  was  the  same  young  fellow 
who  came  into  my  office  to  get  a  place 
last  year  when  you  weredown,  and  said  he 


148         STORIES   OF   THE   RAILWAY 

had  "  run  to  seed."    But,'  he  says,  '  Gen 
tlemen,  it  was  d d  good  seed  !  '  " 

How  good  it  was  no  one  knew  but  two 
weeping  women  in  a  lonely  house. 


FLANDROE'S   MOGUL 

BY  A.  C.  GORDON 


I. 


I  HE  November  sun 
shine  came  in  through 
the  grim  y  panes  , 
where  a  belated  fly 
was  buzzing  drearily. 
The  jury,  worn  out 
with  their  three  days' 
service  in  the  case,  were  half-dozing  in 
the  box.  The  deputy  sheriff,  a  little  man 
with  a  big  mustache  and  a  fierce  manner, 
walked  down  from  his  seat  on  the  plat 
form  near  the  clerk's  desk,  and  opened 
the  door  of  the  iron  stove.  Then  he 
stirred  the  embers  with  a  stout  hickory- 
pole,  and  pitched  in  the  butt-cut  of  an 
oak-log  ;  the  sparks  flew  in  showers  ;  the 
stove-door  was  shut  with  a  bang  ;  the 
deputy  climbed  into  that  elevated  seat  of 


STORIES    OF   THE    RAILWAY 


torture,  the  witness-stand,  which  was 
reached  by  a  narrow  flight  of  steps,  and 
surveyed  the  court-room.  The  only 
noise  audible  was  the  loud  hum  of  the 
replenished  fire  and  the  monotonous 
voice  of  the  portly  lawyer  for  the  rail 
road-company,  as  he  read  from  the  slips 
of  paper  which  he  held  in  his  hands. 

The  dust  was  thick  upon  the  three 
portraits  of  eminent  legal  functionaries 
of  the  local  bar,  long  since  departed  this 
life,  that  hung  from  precarious  nails 
above  the  judge's  head.  The  furniture 
of  the  room  was  primitive  and  worn,  and 
the  clerk's  desk  and  sheriff's  box  alike 
were  scarred  with  the  carvings  of  idle 
jack-knives.  The  atmosphere  was  close 
and  unpleasant,  and  yet  there  was  a 
crowd  congregated  there,  for  the  case 
was  one  that  had  excited  peculiar  interest 
in  the  little  country-town. 

The  deputy-sheriff,  whose  mind  was 
never  perfectly  at  rest  except  when  his 


FLANDROE'S  MOGUL  153 


body  was  actively  engaged,  moved  down 
from  the  witness-chair  at  an  inopportune 
moment,  and,  seeing  Mr.  Bamford,  the 
railroad-lawyer,  pause  and  look  at  him 
over  his  spectacles,  called  out,  as  if  in 
self-defence  : 

"  Silence  in  co'te  !  " 

Bamford,  who,  in  spite  of  his  stalwart 
form  and  ample  girth,  was  nervous  and 
easily  thrown  off  his  balance,  glared 
fiercely  at  the  little  deputy,  looked  at  the 
judge  with  an  expression  of  despair,  took 
off  his  spectacles  and  laid  them  upon  the 
written  memoranda  he  had  placed  before 
him  on  the  bar,  and  pulled  out  a  huge 
white  handkerchief,  like  a  flag  of  truce,  as 
though  to  say  : 

"  Well,  what's  the  use  ?     I  give  it  up  !  " 

The  judge,  however,  had  no  sympathy 
with  nervousness,  and  these  dramatic 
performances  on  the  part  of  counsel  only 
served  to  anger  him.  He  said,  impa 
tiently,  "  Oh  !  go  on." 


154         STORIES   OF   THE   RAILWAY 

And  Mr.  Bamford,  dropping  his  hand 
kerchief,  picked  up  his  spectacles  and  his 
notes,  and  proceeded. 

The  deputy  in  the  meanwhile,  consider 
ably  abashed,  crept  back  to  his  seat  near 
the  desk  of  his  friend  the  clerk,  and 
queried  of  that  worthy  over  the  interven 
ing  railing,  "  Ain't  old  Bamford  a  durned 
fool  ?  " 

The  clerk,  to  whom  the  prolonged  ex 
amination  of  witnesses  had  brought  an 
agreeable  respite  from  work,  acquiesced 
with  a  nod  of  his  head,  and  went  on  roll 
ing  and  unrolling  a  sheet  of  legal-cap 
paper,  through  which,  in  its  telescopic 
shape,  he  looked  now  and  then  at  Mr. 
Bamford,  with  the  malicious  purpose  of 
attracting  his  attention  and  exciting  his 
nervous  ire.  But  he  was  out  of  the  fo 
cus  of  the  lawyer's  spectacles  ;  and  Mr. 
Bamford  continued  to  read  his  instruc 
tions  prosily  and  deliberately.  Mr.  Hyke, 
the  counsel  for  the  plaintiff,  had  already 


FLANDROE'S  MOGUL 


taken  occasion  to  express  his  fine  scorn 
of  the  idea  of  "  instructing  "  such  a  jury 
as  the  one  he  saw  before  him.  He  was 
"  perfectly  willing  to  commit  the  case  as 
it  stood,  without  a  word  from  the  court, 
and  even  without  argument,  to  the  un 
trammelled  judgment  of  so  intelligent  a 
body  of  men  ;  whose  superiors,  in  fact, 
in  his  four  years'  practice  he  had  never 
yet  seen  in  that  box." 

His  wily  adversary,  recognizing  Hyke's 
transparent  trick,  had  exposed  it  with 
much  ridicule  to  the  jury— one  of  whom 
had  been  observed  to  smile  broadly. 

"  Gentlemen,"  Mr.  Bamford  had  said, 
"you  have  all  heard  the  story  of  the  boy 
in  the  big  road,  with  his  wagon-load  of 
hay  upset,  and  making  a  great  outcry 
for  help.  He  didn't  care  a  cent  about 
the  hay,  gentlemen— oh,  no  !  But  the 
reason  he  hollered  was,  his  dad  was  un 
der  it.  Mr.  Hyke  don't  care  about  in 
structions,  gentlemen  of  the  jury— but 


156          STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 

he's  hollering  all  the  same.  Gentlemen 
of  the  jury  " — leaning  forward  confiden 
tially,  and  speaking  in  a  stage-whisper, 
41  Hyke's  dad  is  unde.r  the  hay." 

Mr.  Hyke,  who  was  taking  notes  in  a 
tablet  on  his  knee,  regarded  his  adver 
sary  with  a  twinkle  in  his  eye  and  a 
good-humored  smile  on  his  lips.  There 
was  one  thing  about  Hyke  which  always 
gave  him  a  great  advantage  in  a  fight 
before  a  jury,  and  that  was,  he  never  got 
mad.  This  equanimity  and  easy  compos 
ure  were  wofully  lacking  in  the  tall  and 
rotund  and  pompous  Bamford,  who  re 
garded  Hyke  at  all  times  with  a  decided 
disapprobation. 

The  judge  yawned  wearily  as  Mr.  Bam 
ford  proceeded  with  his  reading,  and 
gazed  now  and  then  through  the  grimy 
window-panes  into  the  street  beyond. 
There  was  nothing  to  interest  him  in 
that  quarter,  however,  for  the  two  canvas- 
covered  wagons  that  went  b*y ,  laden  with 


FLANDROE  S    MOGUL  157 

back-country  produce,  were  no  unusual 
sight,  and  the  people  on  the  plank  side 
walks  drifted  rapidly  past  in  the  whirl 
wind  of  dust  that  a  stiff  November  breeze 
was  raising  and  shaking  over  everything. 

"  Let  me  see  your  instructions,  Mr. 
Bamford,"  he  said  at  length.  Then,  turn 
ing  to  the  jury : 

"  Gentlemen  of  the  jury,  you  are  ad 
journed  until  ten  o'clock  to-morrow 
morning.  Be  prompt  in  your  attendance 
at  that  hour.  In  the  meantime,  do  not 
speak  to  anyone,  and  do  not  allow  any 
one  to  speak  to  you,  about  this  case." 

He  glanced  over  the  written  slips 
which  the  deputy-sheriff  had  handed  him, 
returned  them  to  the  older  lawyer,  leaned 
back  in  his  chair  with  another  yawn,  and 
gazed  once  more  wearily  out  the  window. 
The  jury  filed  through  the  room,  and 
when  they  were  gone,  he  said  : 

"  Proceed,  gentlemen/' 

Taking  up  the  knotty  legal  points  sug- 


158          STORIES    OF   THE    RAILWAY 

gested  by  the  memoranda  of  the  defend 
ant's  counsel,  the  two  lawyers  in  turn  be 
sieged  the  bench  with  quibble  and  quirk, 
until  the  audience  of  whites  down-stairs 
became  bored  and  gradually  melted 
away,  to  gather  in  little  groups  in  the 
court-house  yard  and  discuss  the  testi 
mony  and  speculate  on  the  result. 

"  It's  a-gwine  ter  be  a  hung  jury,"  said 
a  man  with  a  late  straw-hat  and  a  big 
nose.  ujim  Rogerson  ain't  a-gwine 
ter  give  no  verdic'  'gin'  a  railroad-cop- 
peration.  I've  heerd  him  allow  as  cop- 
perations  nuvver  gits  jestis  f  om  farmers 
on  a  jury,  nohow.  He'll  stay  up  thar  in 
that  jury-room  fur  a  week,  afo'  he'll  give 
in.  Thar  ain't  no  bull-headeder  man  in 
the  county  than  Jim  Rogerson." 

"  I  dunno  'bout  Jim  Rogerson,  but  ef 
/  war  on  that  jury  I'd  give  that  man 
every  cent  he  claims,  an'  mo',  too,"  said 
a  younger  man,  who  was  braving  the 
November  gusts  in  a  linen  jacket  and 


FLANDROE S   MOGUL 


159 


corduroy  pantaloons,  "  an'  I  ain't  no  farm 
er,  nuther.  I  don't  blame  the  farmers 
fur  bein'  agin1  the  railroads,  thet's  al'ays 
a-killin'  of  thar  stohck,  an*  nuvver  pays 
'ceptin'  at  the  p'int 
o*  the  law — an'  al'ays 
wants  the  bigges' 
price  fur  haulin'  of 
thar  wheat  an'  truck 
ter  market,  beca'se 
they've  got  the  mo 
nopoly.  I'm  with  the 
people  agin'  the  cop- 
perations. " 

The    speaker   was 
president  of  the  local  '       ' 

debating  society,  and  had  political  aspira 
tions. 

"  I  cudden  give  no  verdict  agin'  the 
comp'ny  on  that  feller  Morgan's  evi 
dence,"  chimed  in  a  third;  "he  center- 
dieted  Flandroe  flat-footed  on  the  wit- 
ness-stan'." 


l6o          STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 


And  so  the  battle  was  waged  outside 
the  court-room,  while  within  Bamford 
read,  for  the  tenth  time  : 

"  If  the  jury  believe  from  the  evidence 

,"     until    even     the     negroes,    who 

thronged  the  galleries  through  love  of 
forensic  contest  and  with  a  keen  appre 
ciation  of  the  grateful  warmth  of  the 
place,  could  stand  the  tedium  of  the 
legal  argument  no  longer,  and  ebbed  out 
ward,  too,  to  hang  about  the  steps,  or 
listen  open-mouthed  to  the  debaters  in 
the  yard. 

"  Dat  ar  man  gwi'  talk  dat  jedge  ter 
death  in  dar,  sho  !  "  said  one  of  them,  as 
they  emerged  into  the  outer  air.  "  I 
ain't  nuvver  heard  nothin',  'scusin'  of  a 
thrashin'-machine,  as  cud  keep  up  wid 
dat  Mr.  Bamford." 

Still,  here  and  there  in  the  galleries  a 
man  and  brother  lingered,  overtaken  by  a 
not  unwelcome  somnolence,  and  sleeping 
bolt  upright  on  the  hard  bench,  with  nod- 


FLANDROE'S  MOGUL  161 


ding  and  wavering  head.  Occasionally  a 
gentle  snore,  that  grew  gradually  into  a 
series  of  startling  snorts,  came  down  to 
the  seat  of  justice,  incongruously  break 
ing  in  upon  some  microscopical  distinc 
tion  which  the  lawyers  were  drawing  be 
tween  the  meanings  of  words.  The 
deputy-sheriff,  who  was  munching  an 
apple,  again  stalked  down  from  his  ele 
vation  at  the  sound  from  the  sleeper, 
twirled  his  big  mustache,  looked  up 
fiercely  into  the  gallery,  tapped  vigorous 
ly  with  the  haft  of  his  knife  upon  the  iron 
stove,  and  in  a  sharp  treble  gave  utter 
ance  to  the  seemingly  irrelevant  com 
mand  : 

"  Walk  light,  upsta'rs,  thar  !  " 
The   drowsy   snorer  opened    his    eyes 
with  a  start,  blinked   solemnly   down  at 
the   deputy,  and  in  a  few    moments  was 
nodding  again. 


162          STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 


II. 


THE  clerk  had  begun  to  enter  a  decree 
in  his  chancery  order-book.  The  dozen 
or  more  spectators  who  yet  lingered  in 
the  warm  atmosphere  of  the  room  were 
either  asleep  or  drowsily  indifferent  to 
what  was  passing.  Beyond  the  judge, 
and  the  two  lawyers,  Bamford  and  Hyke, 
behind  the  bar,  backed  up  by  a  sprink 
ling  of  idle  young  barristers  who  chewed 
tobacco  languidly  and  gave  indifferent  at 
tention  to  the  discussion,  there  was  only 
one  man  who  seemed  to  be  interested  in 
the  present  phase  of  the  case.  He  sat 
near  Mr.  Hyke's  chair,  and  at  intervals 
looked  at  that  gentleman  with  an  expres 
sion  that  betokened  anxiety  to  ascertain 
what  impression  Bamford's  speech  was 
making  on  him. 

With  a  brain  unaccustomed  to  active 
execution  outside  of  a  fixed  routine,  this 


FLANDROE'S  MOGUL  163 


man  had  been  striving  to  follow  the  legal 
subtleties  of  the  learned  counsel  for  the 
defendant  company,  that  ran  like  tangled 
threads  through  his  ingenious  argument, 
and  taxed  the  trained  mind  of  the  judge 
himself.  He  very  soon  felt  that  the  effort 
was  more  than  futile,  and  so  he  gave  it 
up,  contenting  himself  with  eying  in  turn 
the  court,  Mr.  Bamford,  and  Mr.  Hyke. 
He  was  a  striking  figure,  standing,  when 
erect,  some  six  feet  in  his  stockings  ;  and 
his  build  was  massive  and  vigorous. 
From  under  the  weather-beaten  forehead 
keen,  though  kindly,  black  eyes  looked 
out  beneath  shaggy  brows,  and  the  lines 
about  the  mouth,  half-hidden  in  a  fringe 
of  thin  iron-gray  mustache  and  heavier 
beard,  indicated  resolute  firmness  and  de 
cision. 

He  was  a  lieutenant  of  cavalry  in  the 
great  rebellion,  promoted  from  the  ranks 
for  gallantry  in  battle,  and  in  his  day  had 
faced  danger  in  many  forms.  That  scar 


164         STORIES   OF   THE   RAILWAY 

on  the  side  of  his  bronzed  cheek  was 
made  there  by  a  Federal  sabre  years  ago, 
but  the  lost  right  arm  where  the  empty 
sleeve  hung  did  not  lie 
on  any  battle-field.  He 
was  James  Flan- 
droe,  plaintiff 
in  the  pending 
cause  that  stood  on 
the  docket  in  the  style 
of  "  Flandroe  vs.  The 
Southern  Railroad  Com 
pany." 

As  he  sat  there,  his 
mind  wandered  from 
the  scene  before  him  to 
a  cabin  in  the  pine-flats 
of  a  county  two  hundred 
miles  to  the  South,  where  his  wife  and 
children  were  waiting  for  news  of  the  ver 
dict,  and  wondering  if  the  railroad  com 
pany  could  ever  be  made  to  pay  even  a 
pittance  for  the  loss  of  that  strong  arm, 


FLANDROF/S    MOGUL  165 


without  which  the  future  offered  them  but 
a  barren  prospect. 

"Mr.  Rife 'lows  ye'd  better  see  ef  ye 
can't  settle  it  outside'n  the  law,  daddy," 
his  oldest  son  had  said  to  him  before  he 
brought  his  suit;  "he  'lows  that  mebbe 
the  comp'ny'll  give  ye  a  place  whar  ye 
kin  use  yer  arm  that's  soun',  an  whar  ye 
won't  be  in  no  danger  no  ma'.  Ef  they'd 
make  a  job  fur  George  Morgan  'long  o' 
his  hurt  foot,  Mr.  Rife  says  he  reck'ns 
they  mought  do  sump'n  'nuther  fur  you. 
He  says  as  he's  heern  tell  as  it  don't  pay 
fur  ter  fight  railroads  in  law  ;  an'  he 
'lowed  at  the  post-office,  Saturday,  ter  Jim 
Dollins,  that  even  ef  ye  didn't  git  casted 
in  the  suit,  yer  lieyers  'ud  chowzle  ye 
out'n  what  the  law  gin  ye.  He  says  ye 
better  see  ef  you  can't  fix  it  up,  outside'n 
the  law,  'thout  feein'  of  a  lieyer. " 

Wherefore  Flandroe  went  up  to  the 
Cross  Roads  Store,  where  Jamison  dis 
pensed  the  scanty  mail-matter  of  the 


166          STORIES    OF   THE    RAILWAY 

neighborhood  over  the  same  counter  on 
which  he  sold  his  groceries  and  drygoods. 
It  was  the  scene  of  Squire  Rife's  warrant- 


trials  on  every  alternate  Saturday— and 
that  worthy's  office  on  other  days  for  the 
writing  of  deeds  and  wills,  the  judicial  de 
termination  of  whose  meaning  and  legal 
effect  made  many  a  case  for  the  lawyers 


FLANDROE'S  MOGUL  167 

at  the  court-house.  But  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that  Squire  Rife  was  the  involuntary 
author  of  so  much  litigation  in  the  county- 
side,  his  reputation  as  "  a  judge  o'  the 
law"  was  wide-spread,  and  his  advice 
was  sought  on  "  law-p'ints  "  by  many 
who,  with  strong  scruples  against  "  a- 
feein'  of  a  lieyer,"  often  had  subsequent 
reason  to  regret  it. 

He  heard  Flandroe  through,  and  then, 
with  grave  deliberation,  delivered  himself 
of  his  opinion  in  the  premises,  from  the 
dry-goods  box  where  he  sat  whittling  a 
bit  of  white-pine : 

"  I  wudden  give  it  to  no  lieyer,  Jim. 
The  lieyers'll  chowzle  ye.  Ye'd  better  go 
down  ter  the  headquarters,  an'  see  ef  yer 
can't  get  'em  ter  compermise  it.  I've  seed 
a  heap  o'  the  workin's  o'  these  yer  cop- 
perations  in  tryin1  of  cow-cases  in  my 
co'te.  Ef  ye  gits  ter  lawin'  with  'em, 
they  al'ays  fights  it  up  ter  the  last  place. 
A  po'  man  don't  stan'  no  mo'  chance  a- 


l68          STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 

lawin'  of  a  railroad-comp'ny  than  a 
bumble-bee  Stan's  in  a  tar-bucket." 

The  assembled  crowd,  waiting  for  the 
distribution  of  the  mail,  greeted  the  sim 
ile  with  applause,  and  nodded  and  smiled 
at  each  other  in  approval  of  the  squire's 
sage  advice.  And  so  Flandroe  made  a 
journey  to  the  office  of  the  general  super 
intendent  in  the  city  of  W ,  which  is 

the  company's  southern  terminus.  But 
the  corporation  that  he  had  served  for 
thirty-six  consecutive  years,  barring  the 
four  when  he  rode  with  Jeb  Stuart,  had 
turned  a  deaf  ear  to  him.  His  skill  and 
experience  as  an  engineer  were  worthless 
to  it  without  the  right  arm  which  enforced 
them  ;  and  there  were  plenty  of  younger 
men  with  whole  limbs  who  were  ready 
and  eager  to  take  the  vacant  place.  The 
corporation  had  no  position  to  offer  him, 
unless  he  was  willing  to  take  the  post  of 
watchman  in  the  yard  at  Tyron  ;  and  the 
salary  connected  with  it  was  very  small. 


FLANDROE'S  MOGUL  169 

« — 

"  This  is  a  matter  of  business  with  us," 
the  superintendent  had  told  him  ;  "  rail 
roads  can  indulge  in  no  foolish  sentimen 
tality,  you  know.  Of  course,  we  are 
sorry  for  you,  but  past  services  don't 
make  new  dividends,  and  that's  what  we 
are  working  for.  The  man  we  employ 
must  give  a  full  equivalent  for  his  wages  ; 
and  his  worth  to  us  is  measured  solely  in 
dollars  and  cents.  An  engineer  with  his 
right  arm  gone  isn't  of  much  account  as 
an  engineer,  Mr.  Flandroe.  The  only 
thing  that  he  can  do  is  to  take  some  such 
position  as  the  one  the  company  is  willing 
to  give  you,  on  a  release  by  you  of  all 
claim  for  damages." 

This  cool  alternative  of  a  summary  dis 
missal,  without  compensation  for  his 
great  loss,  or  else  a  job  at  starvation- 
wages,  staggered  Flandroe  for  a  mo 
ment.  He  had  not  looked  for  such  treat 
ment  at  the  hands  of  his  employers.  It 
was  no  matter  of  sentiment  with  him,. 


170         STORIES   OF   THE   RAILWAY 

either  ;  but  one  of  simple  justice.  He  had 
served  this  company  a  lifetime,  and  now 
that  it  had  maimed  him  and  destroyed 
his  usefulness,  it  proposed  to  turn  him 
off  to  die  like  a  dog  in  a  ditch.  His  eyes 
blazed,  and  he  shook  his  left  hand  fiercely 
at  the  superintendent,  who  leaned  back  in 
his  cushioned  chair  and  smiled  at  the  in 
dignant  old  man's  threat  "  ter  put  the  law 
onter  "em." 

"  Crack  your  whip,  then,"  he  said  in 
reply,  and  waved  his  hand  to  Flandroe  in 
token  that  the  interview  was  at  an  end. 

The  mutilated  old  man  went  back  to 
the  little  town  near  the  scene  of  his  mis 
fortune,  and  consulted  Lawyer  Hyke. 
who,  after  telling  him  that  a  corporation 
is  a  creature  of  the  law  which  has  neither 
a  soul  to  be  damned  nor  a  body  to  be 
kicked,  and  is  worthy  of  the  contempt  and 
hatred  of  all  mankind,  proceeded  to 
make  copious  memoranda  of  Flandroe's 


FLANDROE'S  MOGUL  171 

narrative  of  the  accident.  Then  he 
looked  into  a  number  of  books,  and  said 
to  the  would-be  suitor  that  he  had  "a 
fighting  chance,"  with  the  odds  against 
him  ;  and  advised  him  to  see  if  he  could 
compromise  the  case. 

"  Find  out  what's  the  best  they'll  do  for 
you.  They've  got  a  way  of  making  black 
look  white  with  their  evidence  ;  and  they 
can  prove  anything.  You  understand 
what  I  mean  ?  In  your  case,  for  ex 
ample,  all  the  testimony  as  to  the  acci 
dent  must  necessarily  be  that  of  men  in 
the  company's  service,  except,  of  course, 
your  own.  Nobody  else  knows  anything 
about  it,  you  know.  Now,  how  many  of 
those  men  have  got  families  ?  Where  do 
they  get  their  bread  and  meat?  How 
many  others,  capable  and  efficient,  are 
waiting  to  slip  into  their  places  as  soon  as 
they  become  vacant?  And  don't  the 
railroad-employe  know  it  ?  And  don't 
the  company  know  that  he  knows  it  ?  " 


I72          STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 


Flandroe  was  half-dazed  with  the  law 
yer's  volubility  ;  but  he  saw  the  point, 
and  nodded  his  head  despondingly. 

"It's  human  nature,"  Hyke  went  on, 
"  and  I  reckon  we  can't  blame  'em.  But, 
understand  me— and  I  always  like  to 
make  this  point  clear  when  I  discuss 
a  railroad-case  with  a  client— I  don't 
mean  to  say  that  witnesses  in  these  cases 
are  always,  or  even  usually,  directly  co 
erced.  I  don't  mean  to  charge  that ;  the 
bosses  are  too  sharp  for  that.  But  I  do 
say  that  these  fellows  feel  the  pressure 
behind  them  in  a  way  that  makes  them 
regard  things  from  a  different  stand 
point  than  that  from  which,  under  or 
dinary  circumstances,  they  would  look  at 
them.  You  understand  me  ?  " 

Flandroe  nodded  again.  Then  he 
blurted  out : 

"  But  thar  ain't  no  use  a-foolin*  'bout 
a  compermise,  lieyer  ;  I've  done  tried  'em 
on  that,  an1  they've  done  tried  me,  an* 


FLANDROE'S  MOGUL  173 

we  can't  come  tergether.  I  went  down 
thar  an'  I  seen  the  sup'intendent,  an'  he 
offered  me  a  job  that  'ud  skasely  do  ter 
starve  on  by  myse'f,  let  alone  my  wife  an' 
child'n.  I  tole  him  it  looked  ter  me  like 
the  wuss  a  fellow  gits  hurt  the  slacker 
the  job  the  company  wants  him  ter  take. 
George  Horgan  got  a  heap  better  place 
than  they  was  a-willin'  ter  give  me — an' 
him  jes'  a  fireman  with  a  mashed  foot." 

"  If  they  hadn't  given  Horgan  that 
place  we  would  have  had  a  dead  open- 
and-shut  case  on  "em,"  said  the  lawyer. 
"  Oh,  we  could  have  smoked  'em  !  We'd 
have  gotten  big  damages.  But  they  are 
smart,  those  fellows.  Horgan's  got  all 
the  points  about  that  switchman  as 
clearly  as  you  have.  They  gave  him 
that  place  to  shut  his  mouth.  He  knows 
the  whole  truth,  if  he'd  only  tell  it." 

4<  George'll  tell  it !  he'll  tell  the  truth, 
lieyer  ;  thar  ain't  no  manner  o'  doubt  o' 
that.  He'll  sing  it  out,  an'  thar  won't  be 


174         STORIES   OF   THE   RAILWAY 

no  more'  stoppin'  o'  him  than  stoppin'  o* 
the  pop-valve  on  that  old  Mogul  o'  mine 
'tvvel  she  stops  herse'f.  I  knows  him." 

"  I  don't,"  said  the  lawyer,  with  a  sneer, 
"  but  I'll  agree  to  take  down  my  shingle 
if,  when  he  comes  to  tell  the  truth  in  this 
case,  the  truth's  most  intimate  friend 
can  recognize  it.  I  tell  you,  it's  human 
nature  for  him  to  save  his  own  hide,  and 
he's  going  to  do  it." 

The  next  day  the  suit  was  entered. 
The  term  of  the  trial-court  came  on 
rapidly.  The  issue  was  made  up,  the 
jury  drawn  and  empanelled,  and  the  evi 
dence  heard.  Employe  after  employe 
of  the  company  took  the  stand  for  the 
defendant  ;  and,  in  spite  of  Hyke's  ingeni 
ous  cross-examination,  Flandroe's  faith 
that  law  always  means  justice  contin 
ued  to  waver  in  the  balance.  During 
the  argument  on  the  instructions  to  the 
jury,  his  spirits  sank  as  he  heard  Mr. 
Bamford  read  from  his  books  case  after 


FLANDROE  S    MOGUL  175 

case  to  show  that  servants  of  a  railway- 
corporation,  injured  by  default  of  a 
fellow- servant,  ought  not  to  recover 
damages.  But  they  were  correspond 
ingly  elevated  when  Hyke  flatly  contra 
dicted  the  statement  of  his  adversary 
that  the  cases  he  had  cited  were  appli 
cable  to  the  one  at  bar ;  and  in  turn 
hurled  precedent  and  citation  at  the 
court's  head,  in  quick  succession,  in  sup 
port  of  his  own  theory  and  position. 

Perplexed  with  these  subtle  matters  of 
the  law,  he  was  stricken  with  an  in 
voluntary  and  sudden  pang  at  the  recol 
lection  of  how  his  fireman  had  "  gone 
back  "  on  him  from  the  witness-stand. 

"  The  lieyer  was  right,  though  I  hadn' 
thought  it.  He  run  with  me  two  year, 
an'  I  larnt  him  as  much  as  mos'  fus'-class 
engine-eers  knows,  an'  thar  warn't  nothin' 
I  wudden  ha'  done  fer  George  Horgan. 
Now  what  do  I  git  fur  it  ?  " 

Stern    in    his    devotion    to    truth    and 


176          STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 

honesty,  the  grim  old  man  could  not  ad 
just  the  fireman's  story  of  the  accident 
to  the  requirements  of  the  oath  which 
he  saw  him  take  on  the  greasy-backed 
little  Bible  there  on  the  clerk's  desk ; 
and  even  his  extended  charity  was  lack 
ing  in  breadth  to  cover  the  transgres 
sion  of  Horgan's  narrative. 

"  He  didn1  tell  the  whole  truth  an' 
nothin'  but  it,  fyar  an'  squar',  by  no  man 
ner  o'  means,"  he  said  to  himself.  "  He 
didn1  let  it  all  out,  like  a  man  ;  but  he 
kep'  back  what  would  'a'  holp  me.  / 
wudden  'a'  helt  nothin'  back,  ef  he  hed 
been  a-lawin'  the  road  fer  that  hurt  leg 
o'  his'n,  even  ef  it  had  cost  me  ten  jobs 
like  that  they  gin  him,  an'  the  old  'ooman 
an'  the  chaps  ter  boot,  let  alone  a  gal  I 
was  a-courtin'.  I  cudden  ha1  kissed  thet 
book  an'  tole  thet  tale,  an'  uvver  looked 
fur  the  Almighty  ter  smile  on  me  no  mo'. 
I  cudden  ha'  done  it.  I'd  'a'  out  with  it, 
no  matter  whar  it  hit.  But  I  dunno. 


FLANDROE'S  MOGUL  177 

Mebbe  them  thar  lieyers  side-tracked  him 
with  their  everlastin'  queshtuns,  an'  ef  so, 
he  warn't  so  pow'ful  much  ter  blame." 

As  they  left  the  court-room,  when  the 
adjournment  came  for  the  day,  Flandroe 
walked  out  behind  his  lawyer,  who  stag 
gered  under  a  load  of  books. 

"  I  think  we've  got  'em,  Jim,"  Hyke 
said,  exultingly,  "  even  though  that  d — d 
rascal  of  a  Horgan  did  go  back  on  you. 
If  the  judge  don't  kick  those  instruc 
tions  out  to-morrow  I'll  take  down  that 
shingle  of  mine,  sure  enough." 

And  away  he  went,  to  delve  into  his 
notes  of  the  evidence,  and  get  up  his 
appeal  to  the  jury  on  the  next  day. 

Flandroe  observed  George  Horgan 
standing  near  the  door,  and  approached 
him.  His  late  fireman  started  to  hobble 
off  as  he  saw  him  coming,  but  the  old 
man  stopped  him  : 

"  George  !  " 


178          STORIES   OF   THE    RAILWAY 


Horgan  glanced  nervously  up,  then 
averted  his  face  and  hung  his  head. 
Two  or  three  by-standers  drew  near,  with 
eager  curiosity.  Flandroe  said  : 

"  I  hadn'  'a'  thought  ye'd  'a'  evidenced 
agin  me  that-a-way." 

The  man  winced,  and  answered  in  a 
low  voice,  without  looking  up  : 

"  I  didn't  want  fur  ter  do  ye  no  harm, 
Jim  ;  but  the  comp'ny  summonsed  me, 
an'  I  was  'bleest  fur  ter  come." 


III. 

IN  front  of  his  cabin  among  the  pines, 
two  hundred  miles  away  from  the  little 
town  in  whose  court-house  the  case 
Flandroe  vs.  The  Southern  Railroad 
Company  had  been  strenuously  fought 
by  both  sides,  and  won  at  last  by  Hyke, 
the  plaintiffs  energetic  little  red-haired, 
bullet-headed,  snub-nosed  attorney,  Jim 
Flandroe  was  sitting  in  the  sunshine. 


FLANDROE'S  MOGUL  179 


His  robust  strength  had  left  him  ;  the 
bronzed  face  had  grown  pale  and  hag 
gard,  and  the  iron-gray  of  his  beard 
had  faded  to  a  rusty  white.  The  loss  of 
his  arm  had  diminished  his  vitality  ;  and 
his  mind  had  been  for  months  past  tor 
mented  with  apprehension  lest  his  case 
should  go  against  him  in  the  appellate 
court,  to  which  his  defeated  adversary 
had  taken  it. 

His  lawyer  had  told  him  that  the 
judges  of  the  Supreme  Court  would  not 
hear  the  oral  evidence  of  the  witnesses, 
but  would  make  up  their  opinion  from 
the  record  which  the  trial-court  had  cer 
tified  up  to  them.  This  information  had 
increased  his  fear  of  an  adverse  deci 
sion. 

"  They  can't  tell  nothin'  'bout  it, 
'thouten  they  see  me  with  this  yer  stump, 
an'  let  me  show  'em  how  the  whole  thing 
happened.  An'  they  can't  jedge  how  it's 
sapped  my  stre,nt',  'thouten  they  cud 


l8o          STORIES    OF    THE    RAILWAY 


look  at  me,  an'  have  somebody  that 
knowed  tell  'em  the  difference  'twix'  the 
machine  that  I  used  ter  be  an*  this  yer 
old  wreck  that'll  nuvver  be  out  on  the 
run  no  mo'." 

The  successful  issue  of  his  case  in  the 
trial-court  had  mitigated  whatever  sore 
ness  Morgan's  testimony  had  caused,  and 
in  its  present  aspect  he  took  comfort  in 
the  knowledge  that  his  former  fireman 
would  not  be  compelled  to  repeat  his  un 
fair  evidence. 

"George  was  always  a  tender-hearted 
sort  of  a  boy,"  he  said,  "an"  I  reck'n  he 
meant  right,  only  he  didn'  have  the  sand 
in  the  box  to  run  on  orders.  I'm  really 
down  glad  the  comp'ny  ain't  a-gwine  ter 
call  on  him  fur  ter  lie  fur  'em  twicet  ter 
pay  fur  that  slack  job  o'  night-watchman 
at  Smoky  Tunnel.  I'm  sorry  fur  George, 
bein'  as  how  I've  heern  tell  that  the  gal 
wudden  marry  him  arter  all  he'd  done 
fur  ter  keep  a  job  on  the  road.  Some 


FLANDROE'S  MOGUL  181 

'lowed  that  she  got  mad  at  him  'ca'se  he 
lied  on  the  trial  ;  but  t'others  says  she 
didn'  want  ter  hitch  outer  no  cripple." 

His  mind  was  constantly  upon  the 
case,  and  the  details  of  it  had  grown  to 
be  more  than  familiar  to  the  members  of 
his  family. 

"  It's  been  two  year  sence  I  got  hurt, 
come  June,"  he  one  day  said,  "  an'  the 
case  is  still  a-hangin'  on — al'ays  put  off 
an'  put  off,  'long  o'  the  railroad,  fur 
sump'n  or  'nuther.  Gittin'  out  o'  law 
ain't  as  easy  as  gittin'  inter  it — leastways 
ef  you're  agin1  a  railroad-copperation. 

"  Two  year,  an'  thar's  skasely  a  night 
in  all  that  time  that  I  hain't  dreamed  o' 
runnin'  on  the  Northern  Division.  Some 
times  it's  one  lay  o'  the  track,  an'  then 
ag'in  anuther.  But  it  seems  like  I'm  on 
the  old  Mogul,  all  the  while,  a-feelin'  of 
her  shakin*  an'  a-quiverin'  from  whar  I 
sets  in  the  cab,  like  a  race-hoss  under  the 
line.  An'  George  is  al'ays  with  me,  up 


182         STORIES    OF   THE    RAILWAY 

thar  on  his  box  on  t'other  side  when  she's 
on  the  level  or  a-rollin'  on  the  down-grade, 
an'  a-heavin'  in  coal  when  she's  on  the  up 
an'  the  smoke's  a-flyin'.  I  reck'n  it's  all 
in  my  mind  so  much  endurin1  o*  the  day, 
that  I'm  beholden  fur  ter  dream  'bout  it 
o'  nights." 

Shading  his  face  with  his  hand,  as 
though  peering  at  some  object  in  the  dis 
tance,  he  continued  : 

"The  track's  al'ays  afo'  me,  an'  I'm 
constant'  a-lookin'  out  fur  sump'n  on  it. 
I  used  ter  cud  see  a  pig  betwixt  the  rails 
as  fur  as  the  next  one,  but,  somehow, 
these  old  eyes  are  gittin'  dimmer.  I  tell 
ye,  it  takes  a  power  o'  nerve  fur  ter  run  a 
ingine,  ef  /  do  say  it,  that  run  one  these 
thirty  year.  I  don't  mean  ter  brag,  for  I 
kep1  the  fear  o'  God  afo'  me,  an'  jes*  done 
the  best  I  cud  for  the  comp'ny,  come 
what  would.  But  it  was  a  ticklish  busi 
ness,  an'  it  skeers  me  sometimes  now, 
when  I  looks  back  at  it. 


FLANDROE'S  MOGUL  183 


"  Ye've  got  ter  have  faith  in  Goddle- 
mighty  then,  sure,  a-swingin'  up  an'  down 
them  mount'n-sides,  dark  nights  or  bright, 
when  a  rock  on  the  track  f ' om  a  landslide 
'u'd  fling  the  whole  caboodle  down  the 
motmt'n  an'  inter  kingdom  come  afo'  you'd 
know  it.  Ye're  'bleest  ter  keep  a  steady 
han'  an'  a  keen  eye ;  but  mo'n  that,  ye're 
'bleesten  ter  b'lieve  thar's  somebody  big- 
ger'n  the  president  o'  the  road  or  the 
gen'al  supe'intendent  a-backin'  of  ye  up. 
Ef  ye  don't,  ye  ain't  no  fittin'  man  fur  ter 
run  a  lightnin'-express  on  that  division, 
that's  all ;  though  thar's  many  a  one  that 
ain't  nuvver  looked  at  it  that-a-way.  God 
he'p  'em,  when  thar  time  comes. 

"  I  kep'  that  notion  fo'mos'  in  my  head 
all  the  years  I  druv  an  ingine,  an'  most  of 
all  when  I  had  that  passenger  Mogul.  I 
reck'n  I  cuden  a'  shet  it  out  ef  I  had  tried, 
which  I  didn't.  It  was  strong  on  me  las' 
night,  strong  as  it  al'ays  used  ter  be  on 
me  in  them  times  when  I  run  through 


184         STORIES    OF   THE    RAILWAY 


Smoky  Tunnel.  That  thar  hole  in  the 
mount'n  is  nigh  onter  a  mile  long  ;  an'  on 
the  up-grade,  goin'  South,  as  ye  start 
inter  the  mouth  of  it,  the  man  in  the  cab 
that  can  forgit  the  Lord  that  made  him 
mus'  be  built  on  a  cur'us  patent.  Over 
head  an'  all  aroun'  an'  about  ye  thar's 
darkness  an'  furss  ;  an'  coal-smoke  gits  in 
yer  eyes,  an'  in  yer  nose  an'  in  yer  mouf ; 
an'  fur  off  at  the  een'  thar's  a  leetle  teen- 
chy  speck  o'  light  like  the  p'int  of  a 
needle.  Ye  can't  see  the  track,  ye  can't 
hear  yerse'f  talk  ;  thar  ain't  nothin'  fur  ye 
ter  do,  'thouten  it  is  ter  have  faith  an'  let 
her  go.  An'  then,  that  thar  speck  o'  light 
grows  on  ye,  an'  keeps  gittin"  bigger'n 
bigger  ;  an'  the  smoke  an'  the  racket 
don't  bother  ye  so  much  as  they  did  at 
fust.  Then  ye  begin  ter  ree-collec'  thar's 
a  'een'  ter  the  Smoky  Tunnel  out  thar  be- 
yant,  that  ye  11  git  ter  bimeby.  An'  it 
comes  acrost  yer  mind  that  thar  ain't  no 
purtier  valley  in  the  worrul  than  the  one 


FLANDROE'S  MOGUL  185 

jes*  ter  the  tunnel's  foot  at  t'other  side, 
whether  ye  glimge  it  by  night,  when  the 
moon  is  shinin'  on  the  fogs  that  half-way 
hides  it,  or  whether  ye  see  it  in  the  day 
light,  when  ye  can  foller  the  windin'  roads 
like  cow-paths,  an'  the  creeks,  an'  the 
branches  that  look  like  slips  o'  silver  rib 
bons  in  the  sun. 

"  I  used  ter  al'ays  think  o'  heaven  when 
I  seen  Los'  Gap  Valley,  beca'se  comin' 
through  Smoky  Tunnel  'peared  somehow 
ter  fetch  up  ter  my  mind  the  dark  and 
onsartin  way  o'  life." 


IV. 


IT  was  half-past  nine  o'clock  of  an  even 
ing  in  June,  and  the  first  section  of  Num 
ber  Thirteen  was  due  at  Kayton  Station, 
one  mile  south  of  Smoky  Tunnel  and 
overlooking  the  beautiful  valley  of  Lost 
Gap.  In  the  telegraph  office  up-stairs 
the  instruments  were  ticking  rapidly ; 


l86         STORIES    OF   THE    RAILWAY 


while  in  the  depot  below  were  seated  some 
half-dozen  men,  dressed  in  blue  jean 
blouses  and  overalls,  with  picks  and 
shovels  and  tool-kits  and  lanterns  at  their 
feet.  They  were  railroad-hands  who  had 
been  at  work  in  the  tunnel,  and  were  now 
waiting  for  the  incoming  freight-train  to 
take  them  home. 

"I  heerd  as  how  Flandroe  los'  his  case," 
said  one.  "  What  makes  me  think  of  it 
is,  'twas  jes'  about  this  time  a  year  that 
Fifty-seven  was  wrecked  out  thar  by  the 
tunnel." 

"Los"  his  case?  That  can't  be,"  said 
another,  who  was  known  to  his  comrades 
as  Long  Tim.  "  I  ree-collec'  how  old 
man  Bamford  snorted  wrhen  the  jury 
come  in.  They  gin  him  six  thousan'  dol 
lars.  I  war  thar  at  the  trial  an'  heern  it 
all.  The  comp'ny  summonsed  me,  but 
they  didn'  put  me  on.  I  knowed  nothin' 
mo'  "bout  it  than  what  Mike  Dunlap  tole 
me  afo'  the  comp'ny  run  him  off  down 


FLANDROE'S  MOGUL  187 

South ;  an'  Bamford  'lowed  that  they 
didn'  want  that,  an'  cudden  have  it  ef 
they  did,  bein'  as  it  was  hearsay." 

'*•  Yes,  but  they  tells  me  the  comp'ny  tuk 
the  case  up  higher  ;  an'  that  the  big  court 
down  ter  Richmon'  busted  old  Jim  up 
wusser'n  uvver  Mike  Dunlap  done  when 
he  opened  the  switch  that  night,  like  a 
sleepy-head  fool  that  he  was.  They  tuk'n 
tuk  the  las'  cent  away  f  om  him.  I  got  it 
f'om  George  Horgan.  He  says  Cap'n 
Hemstone  fotch  the  news  up  f'om  the  junc 
tion  ter-day  on  Number  One.  He  'lows 
they  say  Flandroe  got  hurt  'long  of  a  fel- 
low-sarvant,  or  some  sich  foolishness,  an' 
that  it  ain't  law  fer  the  comp'ny  ter  pay." 

"  Well  I'm  sorry  for  old  Jim,"  said  one 
of  the  men  who  had  not  before  spoken  ; 
"  I  seen  a  heap  of  him  when  I  war  in  the 
yard  at  Tyron  ;  an*  it's  my  jedgmen'  thar 
warn't  no  better  man  to  han'le  a  ingine  on 
the  road.  That's  what  they  all  said — 
Cap'n  Bigby,  an'  all  on  'em  thar." 


l88         STORIES   OF   THE   RAILWAY 


"  I  reck'n  George  Horgan  feels  sorter 
put  out  'bout  his  evi-dence,"  said  Long 
Tim.  "  I've  heerd  tell  that  the  lieyers  all 
'lowed  that  what  George  said  at  the  trial 
hurt  Jim's  case  wusser'n  anything  else." 

"  I  dunno,"  replied  the  man  who  had 
first  spoken,  a  low,  thick-set  fellow  with 
a  bushy  brown  beard,  whose  name  was 
Brand;  "he's  al'ays  a-comin'  over  the 
case  ;  'pears  like  he  can't  let  up  on  it. 
He  was  pow'ful  cut  up  t'other  day  when 
somebody  tole  him  how  low-down  an' 
feeble  the  old  man  was  a-gittin'." 

"  Yes,  he's  talked  ter  me  'bout  the  old 
man  failin'.  It  'pears  ter  sorter  lay  onter 
his  mind.  He  can't  be  alongside  o'  ye 
five  minutes  afo'  he's  a-tellin'  ye  that  he's 
1'arnt  that  Jim  Flandroe's  purty  poly, 
and  pow'ful  hard  run  for  money  ter  live 
on.  He  axed  me  this  mornin*  ef  I  hadn' 
heerd  it,"  said  another  one  of  the  men. 

"Who's  runnin'  Fifty-seven  now,  any 
how  ?  "  queried  Brand. 


FLANDROE'S  MOGUL  189 


"  She  ain't  nuvver  come  out  o'  the 
shops  sence  the  last  accident  ter  her. 
Thar  ain't  no  wages  'u'd  make  me  run  on 
that  old  Mogul,  gen'lemen,  ef  I  war  an  in- 
gine-driver.  No,  sirree  !  John  Brice  got 
his  leg  bruk  on  her  at  Payson's  Bridge, 
an'  Henry  Dexter  was  hurt  in  the  back 
the  night  she  smashed  inter  Number  One 
at  Stapleses.  The  boys  is  all  a-gittin' 
mistrus'ful  of  her,  they  tell  me  ;  an  they're 
mighty  right.  She's  onlucky,  an'  I've 
heern  a  heap  on  'em  say  they  wudden 
travel  behine  her,  not  for  no  pay." 

"  I  reck'n  the  comp'ny  better  keep  her 
in  the  shops,"  said  Brand.  "  They  ain't 
a-gwine  ter  fine  no  ingineer  on  this  yer 
division  fur  ter  drive  her  no  mo'." 

"What's  the  matter  with  George?" 
asked  one  of  the  party,  sitting  nearest  the 
window,  and  starting  up  ;  "  he's  jes'  went 
pas'  the  window  with  his  lantern  like  a 
streak  o'  lightnin'.  I  nuvver  thought  he  cud 
git  over  groun'  that  fas'  on  his  game  leg." 


IQO         STORIES    OF   THE    RAILWAY 

"  'Twudden  'sprise  me  ef  George  was 
a-drinkin',"  Long  Tim  said,  in  an  under 
tone,  to  his  next  neighbor.  "  I  think  he's 
got  sump'n  'nuther  on  his  mine.  I  dimno 
ef  it's  beca'se  Sal  Desper  kicked  him  an 
married  Hinksley,  or  ef  it's  the  old  trouble 
long  o'  his  evi-dcnce  'g'in  Jim  Flandroe. 
Ef  it  gits  ter  Bigby  that  he's  a-samplin' 
the  bug-juice,  he'll  fire  him  out  o'  his  job 
afo'  he  can  bat  his  eye." 

Up  above,  in  the  telegraph-office,  the 
instruments  continued  to  tick  merrily. 
The  first  section  of  Number  Thirteen  was 
on  time,  and  due  in  twenty  minutes.  The 
operator  was  at  his  desk,  with  the  fore 
finger  of  one  hand  on  the  key  and  a  pen 
in  the  other,  when  the  man  who  had  just 
passed  the  window  came  hobbling  and 
stumbling  into  the  depot,  and,  hurrying 
past  the  men  who  were  waiting  there, 
went  up-stairs  toward  the  telegraph-office. 

As  he  passed,  he  called  out : 

"  For  God's  sake,  boys  !  thar's  a-gwine 


FLANDROE'S  MOGUL  191 


ter  be  a  cullision  three  mile  south,  ef 
Thirteen's  on  time." 

"What's  the  matter?"  they  asked, 
breathlessly  and  in  chorus,  and  tumbled 
up  the  steps  after  him,  kicking  over  tool 
kits  and  lanterns  as  they  went.  Long 
Tim,  who  had  just  expressed  a  doubt  of 
the  speaker's  sobriety,  was  leading  the 
van. 

With  ghastly  face  and  shortened  breath 
Horgan  hobbled  on,  and  flung  the  door 
of  the  telegraph-office  wide  open.  The 
gang  of  workmen  pressed  in  behind  him 
as  the  operator,  looking  up  in  astonish 
ment  and  anger,  exclaimed  : 

"  Well,  what  in  the  h — ll's  broke  loose 
now  ?  " 

The  reply  was  a  contra-query  from 
Horgan  : 

"  What  train  was  that  just  went  by  ?  " 

"  Train  ?  what  are  you  talking  about?" 
asked  the  now  astounded  operator. 

"  That   express    train  that  went  south 


192         STORIES   OF   THE    RAILWAY 

little  while  ago.  I  met  her  betwixt  here 
an'  the  tunnel.  I  signalled  for  her  ter 
stop  with  my  lantern,  but  she  went  on 
like  makin'  up  los'  time.  She  was  fyarly 
a-sailin.'  She'll  smash  damnation  out  o' 
Thirteen." 

"  Have  you  got  the  mikes,  or  are  you 
a  natural-born  fool  ?  "  asked  the  opera 
tor,  with  increasing  wrath.  "  You  know 
no  train  has  gone  by  here  for  thirty  min 
utes." 

The  night-watchman  looked  about  him 
in  a  dazed  fashion,  and  passed  his  hand 
over  his  eyes.  Shadows  of  superstitious 
awe  gathered  about  the  waiting  gang  of 
section-hands,  who  gazed  at  him  with 
blanched  faces.  Turning  to  Brand,  he 
said  : 

"  Ye  seen  it,  didn'  ye,  Jo  ?  " 

"  Thar  ain't  no  train  been  by  here  sence 
Number  Seven,"  was  the  half- whispered 
answer. 

Even  Long  Tim  felt  the  hair  bristling 


FLANDROE'S  MOGUL 


i93 


on  the  back  of  his  head  and  cold  chills 
creeping  down  his  spine. 

The  men  gathered  closer  about  Hor- 
gan,   in    silent    ex 
pectation. 

"  What  did  ye 
see,  George?" 
queried  one,  more 
eager  than  the  rest. 

The  telegraph- 
operator,  with  a 
frown  on  his  face,  '*/**•* 

looked  up  from  the 
work  which  he  had 
resumed,  to  listen. 

The  ticking  of  the  instrument  was  loudly 
audible  above  the  speaker's  voice. 

"  I  seen  a  passenger-express  come  out'n 
the  tunnel  at  sixty  mile  an  hour.  By  the 
light  o'  my  lamp,  it  was  Fifty-seven.  The 
ingine-man  war  a-lookin'  down  the  track, 
an'  his  lef  han'  war  on  the  lever.  I  cud- 
den  ketch  his  full  face " 


194         STORIES   OF   THE   RAILWAY 

He  paused  a  moment,  as  if  thinking. 
Then : 

"  But  his  beard  and  his  hyar — Goddle- 
mighty  save  me  !  it  war  Jim  Flandroe." 

"  Boys,"  said  Brand,  solemnly,  turning 
to  his  companions,  "do  you  know  what 
that  means  ?  It  means  old  Jim  is  dead." 

"  It  means  that  George  Morgan's  drunk, 
and  you  all  are  a  pack  of  d — d  fools," 
said  the  disgusted  telegraph  operator. 
"  Get  out  o'  here,  all  of  ye  !  I'll  let 
Bigby  know  about  this  to-morrow." 

Two  nights  later,  as  he  sat  alone  in  his 
office,  reading  a  novel,  a  call  came  over 
the  wires  from  an  operator  at  the  south 
ern  terminus.  The  response  of  the  novel- 
reader  brought  the  message  : 

1 '  /  heard  to-day  that  old  Flandroe,  who 
was  hurt  at  Smoky  Tunnel  and  sued  the 
company,  has  gone  out  on  the  long  run. 
He  died  a  day  or  two  ago,  and  I  thoztght 
youd  like  to  know  about  it,  being  close  to 
the  scene  of  the  accident" 


FLANDROE  S    MOGUL 


195 


Back  went  the  question  : 

"  When  did  he  die?" 

There  was  an  interval  of  waiting  that 
taxed  the  nerves  of  the  man  at  the  keys 
in  the  Kayton  office.  The  novel  had 
fallen  unheeded  to  the  floor.  Presently 
the  instrument  ticked  out  : 

"  Half -past  nine  on  Tuesday  evening- 
last,  McDonald  tells  me." 

It  was  the  very  hour  when  Horgan  had 
met  the  spectral  engine. 


STORIES  FROM  SCRIBNER 
* 

STORIES  OF 

NEW  YORK 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
1893 


In  this  'series  of  little  books,  issued  under  the 
general  title  "  Stories  from  Scribner,"  the  purpose 
has  been  to  gather  together  some  of  the  best  and 
most  entertaining  short  stories  written  for  Scrib- 
ner's  Magazine  during  the  past  few  years,  and  to 
preserve  them  in  dainty  volumes  grouped  under 
attractive  subjects  and  decorated  by  a  few  illus 
trations  to  brighten  the  pages. 

The  set  as  arranged  consists  of  six  volumes,  the 


14  DAY  USE 

ETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWEI 
LOAN  DEPT. 

rhis  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


LIBRARY  USE 


btorios   of   the    railwa 


M144831 

i* 


^«  A  w  wt?/^v>ii.TY  &     v 


